Chapter 46
We emerged from the cellar to find Charles in the corridor that led to the bar. The door was shut, blocking his way, with Brenda on the other side. Charles and Brenda were shouting at each other, Charles demanding to be let in, Brenda telling him to leave.
‘Hello, Charles,’ Jasmine said.
He turned around. His mouth fell open.
‘Oh. Oh, my angel,’ he said, rushing towards her.
‘You’re alive. You’re alive.’ I thought he was going to burst into tears.
He really does love her, I thought. He might have found her using a creepy app.
He might be a killer and a liar, a man who had cheated on his dying wife with a teenager, but he genuinely loved Jasmine. ‘Come here.’
He had his arms outstretched, the rifle hanging by its strap from his shoulder.
Jasmine took a step back, palms raised to ward him off, eyes fixed on the gun.
Charles followed her gaze and said, ‘Oh. This.’ He pulled the rifle from his shoulder and set it aside, propping it against the wall, still within easy reach. He tried to embrace Jasmine again, but she took a further step back.
At the same time, Brenda opened the door. She saw Jasmine, then me, and said, ‘Shit.’ Avril was hovering behind Brenda.
‘What’s the matter?’ Charles said to Jasmine. Then he took me in. ‘Oh, I get it. It’s all lies. He’s the guilty one. He killed Zack, and Morag. He’s on the run from the police. You can’t believe anything he says.’
‘Is that right?’ Jasmine said.
‘Where have you been?’ he asked. ‘Did my son try to hurt you? What happened?’
‘Can we go and sit down?’ Jasmine said. ‘I’m cold. Is that all right, Brenda?’
‘What are you up to?’ Brenda asked.
‘Either we all go and sit down or I go to the police right now and tell them about you killing Lewis and locking me up.’
Charles whirled back around, snatching up the gun. ‘You? You killed my boy?’
‘An accident.’
Charles pointed the gun in Brenda’s direction and Brenda moved back to hide behind the door, but Jasmine said, ‘Charles, stop. Put the gun down. We’re all just going to talk. Okay? In fact, why don’t you give it to me?’
To my amazement, he did as she asked.
‘That’s good. Okay, let’s all go into the – what do you call it? – the lounge? Let’s sit. Talk. Have a drink.’
But before we could move, the back door opened again. It was Holly.
She took in Jasmine, then shook her head.
She ran to me and threw her arms around me. ‘Oh, thank God. You’re okay.’ She was out of breath and sweaty. She must have run the whole way.
I looked over Holly’s shoulder at Jasmine, who rolled her eyes.
‘How lovely,’ she said. ‘But I really need that drink.’
We all went into the lounge. The fire was burning in the hearth and the pub reeked of beer and whisky, tabletops crowded with empties, the aftermath of the celebration.
The seasonal bunting that was strung around the room already looked outdated.
Brenda went straight behind the bar and, with shaking hands, poured herself a shot of vodka.
‘Anyone else want a drink?’
‘Can I get a large Coke?’ Jasmine said.
Charles asked for a whisky and I requested water.
Holly did the same, and I stood beside her at a small table.
Jasmine had been wrong about her. The way she had immediately run up to me when she’d arrived, the clear relief on her face to see I was okay – if I’d had any lingering doubts, they were gone now.
Charles went to sit beside Jasmine, but she nodded at the seat across the table. He was clearly confused but went along with it. I stayed standing until Brenda came back over with the drinks, at which point I took a seat.
Now I was sitting, I realized how exhausted I was. Everyone else in the room looked exhausted, too, with the exception of Jasmine. Despite her ordeal, she was burning: with indignation and anger, and something else. She was acting like a woman with a mission that hadn’t been completed yet.
‘Patrick told me everything,’ she said to Charles. ‘Everything that’s happened since Lewis and I went to the caves. You were planning to make him take the blame for all of it. And you thought Holly here would back you up, right?’
Holly and I exchanged a look, which Jasmine saw.
‘I guess you were wrong about that. Guess I was, too.’
‘She’s a traitor,’ Charles said.
‘Fuck you, Dad. You want me to keep lying for you? I’m not going to do it any more. I kept your secret about being Avril’s dad. And I know that wasn’t the first time you cheated, either.’
‘Nonsense.’
‘That’s crap, and you know it. I heard you on the phone, talking to some woman, the first time Mum was sick.
Whispering … gross things. There were other times when you’d get home late, smelling of booze and perfume.
You weren’t as discreet as you thought you were.
’ There were tears in her eyes. ‘Mum knew what you were up to.’
Charles was shaking his head, trying to deny it. But it was too late now. All the masks he wore had been ripped off. The monster had been fully revealed.
‘She tried to defend you,’ Holly said. ‘I went to her, told her what I knew. She told me that nothing could be allowed to destroy our family. I remember exactly what she said to me. She said, “Families are held together by secrets and lies and little pacts. All the things we don’t say. All the things we don’t show the rest of the world. ”’
‘Fuck me,’ said Brenda. ‘My family is held together by love. What’s left of it.’
Holly had picked up a cardboard beer mat from the table and was tearing it to pieces, hardly even aware of what she was doing.
‘She said that a family is like a spider’s web. Almost impossibly intricate and strong. A kind of miracle. But all it takes is for one part of the web to be torn and the whole thing falls apart.’
The metaphor made me shudder. I could almost picture the Grants as a family of spiders, squatting at the edges of this web they’d spun together. And what did it make me? A fly, trapped in the web, wriggling. Their latest victim.
Holly continued. ‘For years, I went along with what she said. Yeah, I ran away. I got so wasted and wild I didn’t know who I was half the time. But even then, I never spilled any of our secrets, even though all this time I knew it was probably you who killed Jimmy.’
Brenda dropped the glass she was holding. It banged on the table, somehow not breaking.
‘It’s not true,’ Charles said.
‘Stop it, Dad,’ Holly said. She sounded like she was going to cry. ‘Please, just stop lying.’ She turned to Brenda. ‘Jimmy saw him and Morag. I’m guessing he threatened to tell everyone.’
Now Brenda was crying. ‘I knew it. I knew it.’
Holly went on. ‘I stayed loyal all these years. But it has to stop. Murdering Samir, killing Morag … it’s too much.’
Charles said nothing. He was getting older before my eyes, turning greyer, frailer, as if all the years he’d held at bay were rushing back. Or like a pact he’d made with some devil had been broken. The picture in the family attic, destroyed.
In a weak voice, Charles spoke to Jasmine. ‘You said you know everything. Does that mean you also know how I found you?’
Jasmine had finished her Coke. Unlike everyone else here, she still seemed very calm. Almost like she was enjoying this. She set the empty glass down on the table. ‘You mean, the app?’
‘Who told you? Lewis? I thought he would keep quiet. He knew if he said anything he would be completely cut off. That he’d never get anything from me.’
‘Yes, Lewis told me,’ Jasmine replied. ‘But not in the caves.’
‘He told you before you went there?’
Jasmine leaned forward. ‘Charles, I knew about the app before I even met you.’