Chapter 43
‘It wasn’t Lewis who got Morag pregnant that night,’ Holly told the room. ‘His car was here when I got back and the bathroom smelled of vomit. Lewis was too sick for anything to happen with Morag. He must have left her at the manor house, and then Dad came along …’
I could see it on Charles’s face. The way he was staring at the floor, the muscles in his cheeks twitching.
‘Dad, it’s time you admitted it. Avril is your daughter.’
Charles muttered something inaudible.
Holly trembled with emotion as she spoke. ‘Avril’s your flesh and blood, Dad. As much as Miranda and I are. You can’t hurt her.’
Charles remained frozen to the spot, still not speaking.
Meanwhile, Miranda kept looking from Charles to Avril and back again, as if the truth of what she’d learned wouldn’t sink in.
Perhaps she should have looked in the mirror, because while Holly and Lewis had taken after their mother, looks-wise, Miranda was more like her father, and there was a clear similarity between her and Avril.
It was in the lips and the eyes. The shape of their noses.
Not a dead ringer, like Jasmine and Elizabeth, but once it was pointed out, once you knew what to look for, it was obvious.
Avril looked broken. She was almost the same age her mum had been when Charles had taken advantage of Morag.
Earlier today, she had thought she’d lost her biological father, Lewis, a man she’d never really known.
Then she had suffered a much greater loss: her mother.
And now, here she was, finding out that she had been lied to.
This was her father. The man who had just pointed a gun at her.
‘You’re …’ She tried to speak but had to stop because her tongue was too dry to get words out. ‘You’re my dad.’
I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised that Charles didn’t try to offer her any words of comfort or reassurance. He wouldn’t even look at her. His third daughter. Maybe, I thought, he was afraid that if he allowed himself to connect with her in any way it would make everything too difficult.
Instead of offering any kind of apology, he said, ‘Biologically speaking.’
Avril stared at him and then spat, ‘Nothing more than sperm.’
‘But I’ve acted responsibly,’ he said, finally able to look at her. ‘I paid for your upbringing.’
‘What? You think that was responsible? Giving us just enough to live on while the rest of your kids grew up in luxury?’
‘I think you’ll find I have been extremely generous.’
‘Fuck you,’ Avril said. ‘You’re not my dad. I never had one.’
But even though her words made me want to cheer her on, there was a wobble in her voice, betraying that she cared. How could she not?
And then, suddenly, Miranda rounded on Charles.
‘How could you?’ Her voice rose. ‘How could you?’ She jabbed a finger at Holly. ‘And you. You knew all this time? And kept it secret from me?’
Charles moved towards her. ‘Miranda, calm down.’
‘No! I won’t. Men are always telling me to calm down, and I am sick of it! Especially a man who left his house while his wife, our mum, was dying and … and went out and fucked a seventeen-year-old. Mum had months left to live. Couldn’t you have waited?’ She screamed it at him.
‘Miranda …’
‘Do not say my name.’ Her voice cracked with emotion.
‘Our mum, our beautiful mum, was lying in her bed, too sick to celebrate New Year, and I was sitting with her, looking after her, and do you know what she said, what she said to me and Holly? Family is everything. She made us promise to look after you, to keep the family together. And all the time, you were betraying her. Betraying all of us. An old man, screwing a girl.’
‘I wasn’t old.’
‘Was it the first time? Or were you and Morag already carrying on? Sneaking around all the time we were here? Huh?’
His lip curled, anger turning his face pink. ‘I don’t have to answer to you.’
She jabbed a finger in his face. ‘Oh, you do. You really do. Were you having an affair with her?’
‘Don’t be ridiculous. It was just the one time.’
‘But that was enough. Once was fucking enough.’
Miranda raked her face with her fingernails, so hard it left marks on her cheeks.
Her husband lay dead a few feet away, and she had barely reacted to that.
But this … I had seen Miranda express fury before.
She had almost attacked Jasmine. Had been twisted up with hatred.
But this was deeper than hatred, stronger than anger.
‘Let me guess. You told Morag how sad you were. Did you cry crocodile tears? Make her feel sorry for you? Or did you use a different ploy? Did you tell her how excited you were about transforming the manor house into an arts centre? Ask her about her dreams of being a writer and tell her how useful the arts centre would be for her? I bet you told her you would personally ensure she got the best tutoring. Made her promises. Made her think you were going to help her achieve this glorious future.’ She sucked in a breath, which she used to hiss at him.
‘But you were just another middle-aged man trying to get into a young woman’s pants.
Not just with your promises but your whole fucking sob story. ’
Charles, who had actually appeared cowed beneath Miranda’s vocal onslaught, slowly lifted his head. ‘It wasn’t like that. I was hurting.’
‘Not as much as this hurts, right now.’ Something struck her. ‘That boy, Morag’s brother. Jimmy. Did you kill him, too? Did he see you screwing his sister?’
‘Don’t be ridiculous. I don’t know anything about that.’
‘I don’t believe you. You’re a liar. Everything has been a lie, hasn’t it, Dad?’
Behind Charles, Holly had sunk to her haunches. She was staring into space, into the past.
‘You did,’ Holly said. ‘You killed Jimmy. He did see you, didn’t he? After I’d left, he would have seen you and Morag together. What happened? Did he confront you? Threaten you?’
‘As if I could be threatened by a boy like that. He was—’
He shut his mouth. It was too late. I saw it play out, a re-enactment. Charles being confronted by Jimmy, knowing the boy would tell everyone what he’d seen. Chasing him to the caves …
No, that couldn’t be right. Morag would have seen.
She would never keep quiet if she’d known Charles murdered her brother.
Maybe there hadn’t been a confrontation.
Perhaps Charles had seen Jimmy watching them, driven Morag home then come back.
Did he talk to Jimmy, offer him something to keep quiet?
In the re-enactment in my head, they were in the caves.
Jimmy said he couldn’t be bought. And that was when Charles realized he needed to act.
When he pushed him over that ledge, before driving home to his family. To his dying wife.
Miranda didn’t seem to care about Jimmy, though. ‘Did Mum know what you did? Did she know you got a girl pregnant?’
‘Of course not,’ he snapped at her. ‘I didn’t want to hurt her. I loved her.’
‘Ha!’
It was his turn to jab a finger towards her.
‘Don’t you ever doubt my love for your mother.
She was everything to me. She was my soulmate.
If I could have swapped with her, if I could have been the one with cancer so she could live, I would have done it without hesitation.
’ He screwed up his face and pressed his fingers against his forehead.
He did look genuinely agonized. ‘I was in a lot of pain. My head full of demons, telling me how unfair it was, not just on your mother but on me. I was young. I was rich. I was powerful. The world should have been mine, but it wasn’t, and I suppose, well, that I needed comfort. Something pure and uncomplicated.’
Down on the floor, Holly made an incredulous noise.
‘A shag with a seventeen-year-old in a derelict building.’ Miranda clapped her hands. ‘Bravo, Dad. Bravo.’
‘You judge me,’ Charles went on, ‘but I did the honourable thing. As soon as I found out about the pregnancy, I made an arrangement with Morag and Brenda and I have kept to that agreement ever since.’
I spoke up. ‘But you made Lewis pretend the baby was his.’
He narrowed his eyes at me. ‘We knew there would be rumours. Speculation about who the father was. It seemed obvious to let people believe it was Lewis.’
‘And he went along with it?’
‘I doubt he had any choice,’ said Holly.
Charles was getting angry again now. ‘You’re all so holier than thou.
Don’t you get it? I had to be pragmatic.
I couldn’t allow the world to find out about this …
this moment of weakness. I was the face of Gravitas.
Our reputation, in the face of all the competition from huge corporations, the thing that won us contracts and helped build customer loyalty, was that we were different to those tech giants.
We were a family business. The plucky little guy.
I knew if what I’d done got out, all those hypocrites and moral crusaders would have had a field day.
The company would be mortally wounded. I did it for us.
For our family. And Lewis understood that. ’
The room fell quiet. Charles, Holly, Miranda, Avril, me. We all looked at each other. Zack’s body lay on the floor, blood congealing on the front of his shirt. In the silence, I heard scratching and whimpering and realized it was Watson, who was shut in the kitchen.
‘How do you think you’re going to get out of this?’ I asked Charles. ‘Your plan was to kill Avril and, I assume, kill me, too, put the gun in my hands, make it look like I’d done it, the same way Zack tried to make it look like I killed Morag. Then hope Holly and Miranda stayed quiet, right?’
He looked tired. Old. All the supplements he took, all the working out – none of that was enough to combat the stress he was under right now.
I could see him thinking, trying to work out a plan.
Here was the man who had solved thousands of business problems, the man who had navigated his company through stormy seas for forty years.
Tangled up in a mess of his own making, with all these secrets to protect.
I couldn’t see any way out that didn’t involve more bloodshed. More death.
The sound of the dog scratching at the kitchen door was growing more intense now. And then a new wave of fireworks went up, crackling and banging, and that made him start barking. A loud, relentless volley.
Miranda moved towards the door.
‘Where are you going?’ Charles demanded.
‘I need to let Watson out of the kitchen.’
‘Stay here.’
She ignored him, striding to the door and opening it. But Charles went after her, grabbing her arm with his free hand, hauling her back.
‘Get your hands off me.’
‘Do as you’re told.’ He tugged her away from the door, his grip strong, and as he pulled away he lost his balance and fell on to his knees, dropping the rifle. Holly tried to snatch it up, but Charles – down on his knees – threw himself at it, getting hold of it and yanking it from Holly’s grasp.
I was so busy watching them, trying to work out how to help without getting shot, that I didn’t see Avril get up from her spot on the sofa until she was a blur, running past me.
Past me and out the door.