Chapter 20
If I could, I’d skip over the whole next scene and just give you the bullet points.
It’s not that what happens isn’t important.
(It is.) It’s not that it doesn’t contain clues to the truth about why GG died.
(It does.) It’s just that, while this family-drama stuff might read on the page like a helpful information dump, when you live through it and then have to relive it, it’s kind of a bummer.
We gather in the kitchen because there’s too many of us to fit comfortably in Bec (hold the Aunty) and Shippy’s bedroom.
Nobody seems sure how to act. Is this a confrontation?
An intervention? A seriously awkward extended-family get together, not entirely dissimilar to that Christmas lunch when Aunty Vinka’s then-boyfriend got drunk and passed out in the bathroom?
Aunty Vinka is (massive surprise) making tea from some of her stinky herbal concoctions, while Dad keeps staring at the letter as though the numbers and letters might rearrange themselves to reveal something new.
Dylan won’t meet my eyes, but that might be because I’m not trying too hard.
Still, every time I sneak a look, he’s staring straight at the kitchen cupboards, and they can’t possibly be that interesting.
It’s hard to say whether he’s (a) furious with me for ratting out his mum and her shifty boyfriend (likely) or (b) furious at them for, well, being the worst (also likely) or (c) a combination of the two (ding, ding, ding) with a sprinkling of justifiable rage that I didn’t say anything earlier.
Now is not the moment to ask the only question I really want to ask him: Did you know?
“So,” Dad says, taking charge because of a lack of reasonable alternative candidates. He’s put his chair so close to mine he keeps accidentally banging my ribs with his elbow, but I don’t mind. “Which of you wants to tell us what’s been going on before we call the cops?”
“There’s no—”
“I will go to the paddock!”
“Okay, okay.”
Aunty Vinka puts a mug of something unidentifiable in front of me, and although it does smell disturbingly like my schoolbag on a Friday afternoon, I take it gratefully because pretending to drink it gives me something to do.
“I’m sorry,” Bec says, but it’s clearly the kind of sorry-not-sorry apology celebrities make after posting something racist/sexist/transphobic on Instagram, because the next words out of her mouth are “but this is ridiculous.”
“What do you expect, Bec? You’ve been pretending to be my sister.
That’s something a soap-opera character or a crazy person does.
Since you’re not on a soap opera, I can only imagine that you’re a crazy person.
” I can tell Dad is the kind of furious he usually only gets around election time by the fact that he’s using the word crazy as an insult—something he always tells me off for doing.
The one time I said “this is mental” about an economics assignment, he gave me a ten-minute lecture on mental-health stigma that made me late for tennis practice.
“This isn’t about you, Andy.”
“Of course it is.”
“What do you want from me? I’ve already said sorry.”
“How about you start with why you did it, and we’ll decide whether to call the cops.”
There’s a long pause, during which Bec presumably weighs her options and finds bugger all in the way of graceful exit strategies.
“What do you want to know?”
“Why?”
“It was an impulse. It wasn’t planned.”
“An impulse to deceive your oldest friends,” Aunty Vinka says, and, unlike Dad, she seems to have landed on hurt rather than rage. Perhaps the hurt will come later for Dad, the way I sometimes get super furious when I stub my toe, before the pain really has time to kick in.
“An impulse to make money,” Dad says.
“An impulse to belong,” Bec says. “I don’t have any family now Mum’s dead.”
“You were already part of our family,” Aunty Vinka says. “You have Christmas with us almost every year.”
“It’s not the same.” Bec looks around, maybe to see how we’re taking it. “I’m not even included in the Secret Santa.” She says the second bit quietly.
“So this is about wanting to add to your supply of scented candles?” Dad says (and I feel betrayed because I gave him a candle last year).
“Once your dad died and you found that letter, we all knew he had a kid out there somewhere that he’d never met. One night I was thinking about how my life would be different if it was me, and then I thought, Why not?”
“Wow,” Dad says.
“That kid is never going to be found—they could be anywhere in the world. I’m adopted, and my mum was best friends with your mum. It’s not completely impossible to imagine she adopted the child of her best friend’s husband and just…never told anyone.”
“Not impossible, but it didn’t actually happen,” Dad clarifies, and, man, he is piiiiissed.
“I did think that was a pretty cold-blooded thing for your mum to do,” Aunty Vinka says thoughtfully. “Not really like her at all. Much more of a Virgo vibe.”
“I didn’t think it would hurt anyone. My parents are dead. I’m an only child. You wanted to believe me. Don’t pretend you weren’t happy when you found out it was me.”
“It wasn’t you,” Dad says.
“Not technically.”
“Not even a little bit. The DNA test you showed us, I suppose that was faked?”
“Yeah.”
“How do you fake a DNA test?” Aunty Vinka asks.
Dad and I answer her at the same time: “The internet.”
“I’m sorry, okay? In a weird way I thought it would make everyone happy.
It seemed like the definition of a victimless crime.
” Bec looks momentarily so glum, so actually sorry, that Aunty Vinka reaches across the table and touches her shoulder.
She is way too nice, but then she wasn’t in GG’s bedroom to hear Bec and Shippy going through her stuff.
She wasn’t in their bedroom when Shippy came home, and she didn’t see the way that he looked at me.
Dad isn’t buying it. “And the small matter of your inheritance was of no consequence, obviously,” he says. “I’m sure you planned to renounce your share of Dad’s estate at any moment.”
“Is this about me lying or is this about money, Andy?”
“Let’s say both. I am curious, though: When did you realize you had to bump off Gertie to get your hands on the money sooner rather than later?” Way to raise the stakes, Dad.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Bec says. She sounds shocked, but surely she knew this was coming.
“So it’s pure coincidence that the one woman who knew you were a fraud, who knew that you’d lied about being her late husband’s love child, and who stood between you and a garbage truck full of money, happened to be killed when you were staying in her house?
” The sarcasm in Dad’s voice is thicker than War and Peace.
Teenagers are supposed to disagree with everything their parents say, and usually I do my best, but Dad has a point.
“You think I could kill someone?” Bec asks, sounding incredulous. “Honestly?” She looks at Aunty Vinka. “You too?”
Aunty Vinka doesn’t say anything, but Dad makes a disgusted sound deep in his throat. Disgusted and a bit disgusting, like there’s a lump of phlegm down there he’s thinking about hacking up. Rank. “If you can lie about being my sister, you can lie about anything. I think we should call the police.”
Shippy decides to enter the chat.
“I don’t think that’s necessary, mate. What would you even tell them?”
“The truth. They should know that you’ve been lying to us all and that Gertie found out about it.”
“That’s only relevant if you think Bec killed Gertie.”
“Maybe she did!”
“You can’t honestly think that.”
“You’re using the word honestly? To me? Right now?”
“I get that you’re angry.” Bec’s voice has gone a bit conciliatory, which I could tell her is the wrong way to handle Dad.
It didn’t work when I spilled Coke on his laptop, and it’s not going to work now.
Dad catches my eye and I see the moment when he remembers I’m hearing every word of this, which is probably enough trauma to keep any future therapist in vacation homes. Plural.
“I’m not angry. I’m furious,” Dad says. “And, Ruth, I know this all came to light because of you, but I really think you should get upstairs right now.”
I look to the court of appeal.
“I suppose she has already heard everything,” Aunty Vinka says, but reluctantly. Somehow she and Dad have reversed roles since that first family meeting when we talked about GG’s death and she was the one who wanted to send me away. How can that have been only days ago?
“She hasn’t heard me bloody murder Bec.”
“Try not to say that in front of the police,” Aunty Vinka suggests.
Until now I’ve stayed quiet in the hope of being overlooked. But if Dad is going to kick me out anyway, there’s very little downside to saying my bit.
“I heard you in GG’s room, remember?” I say this to Bec, because I can’t look at Shippy now and maybe I’ll never have to again.
“The night she died, you mean?” Bec says. “Yeah, I spoke to GG that night—I already told the police that.”
That wasn’t what I meant, but now I’m briefly distracted as I try to figure out where that piece of the jigsaw goes.
Could Bec have been the person I heard in GG’s room while I was going to the bathroom?
Definitely. It doesn’t mean she didn’t kill her, though.
And if that was her talking to GG, then where was Dad?
“Not then,” I say. “I heard you and Shippy talking in GG’s room this morning.
” I keep my eyes on Bec, ignoring Dylan and Dad, both of whom have gone as tense as an antelope on the Serengeti that’s just spotted the tuft of a lion’s tail.
“You said Shippy had made you do something to GG and you felt bad about it.” I’m not sure I’ve got the words quite right, but it’s close enough.
You could flick back a few pages and see for yourself, but, trust me, the case doesn’t turn on the exact words I heard or didn’t hear.
It’s going to turn on…no, no, just kidding, you’ll find out soon enough.