Epilogue
December
Raven
Ravens have an episodic memory; they remember faces and can hold grudges.
I’m sitting inside an old, red-brick coffee shop, watching firelight pirouette on the stone floor when he takes a seat opposite me. He’s early, but then, so am I.
‘How’s your mum doing?’ he asks, dropping his wallet and keys to the scarred oak table.
‘Fine.’ I shrug at DCI Gary Quinn. ‘I mean, as good as she can be behind bars I guess.’
He sighs into the palm of his hand, squeezing his mouth between his thumb and forefinger. It makes him look even older than he is.
‘You know I had to do my job, Raven . . . James called in to the station. There was nothing I could do,’ Gary says.
I know he’s right — and to be honest, I’m not even that angry. I’m better off without her anyway. But watching people squirm is so fun.
‘I had to do my job,’ he says, to fill the silence. I’ve started to learn he doesn’t like the quiet. It’s too still for him. Too dormant.
‘You know I’ve done everything your mother has asked of me over the years,’ he mutters into the menu. ‘She says jump, I say how high.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘She asked me to convince James to move closer to her. Said if I didn’t make it happen, she’d ruin me, my career.
She backed me into a corner. I had to do it.
And when you’re as high up in the law as I am, it’s pretty easy to scare anyone into doing anything, as long as they don’t have dirt on you,’ he says, finally meeting my eye.
‘That’s why they moved to the Cotswolds?’ I ask, the truth a jolt running through me. I’d always wondered.
‘That’s why.’ He nods. ‘Your mum has always had me under her thumb, even after we split up.’
Gary, of course, can’t visit my mum, even if he wanted to.
Can’t be seen to have any sort of connection to her.
If it ever came out, I’m pretty sure his career would be over — and anyway, it’s actually quite fun having this information in my back pocket, a sort of smoking gun.
Maybe that’s why he’s always been nice to me, because I know his secret.
Vicky does too, of course, and even I’m surprised she hasn’t spoken out about her connection to Gary considering where he put her.
We order drinks. A caramel br?lée latte for me, an Americano for him.
The lit open fireplace crackles beside us.
The brickwork glowing amber, coffee and sugar thick in the air.
He smiles at me from across the table, a nervous half smile.
It’s awkward between us, always has been and probably always will be.
‘They treating you well over there at your new place?’ he asks.
I’d love to pretend Gary actually cares about the answer to that question, but I know he doesn’t. It’s small talk, something to fill that silence he hates so much.
‘Oh yeah, great. Five star,’ I drawl, licking the whipped cream and caramel sauce spilling over the edges of my mug.
I feel no need to be particularly pleasant to Gary.
He’s here to cover his own ass, I know that.
He just wants to make sure I’m not going to tell the world his big, dark secrets now Vicky’s in prison.
And yet, a vow of silence is something I’m not sure I can take.
Gary knows that. I see it in the fear he’s secreting around me.
He knows he’s treading dangerously close to the edge, to a place where the truth comes out and the world discovers he isn’t the man that manages investigations, helping people find their loved ones.
He’s a slippery, self-preserving officer, corrupt to the core when it comes to the Rushmores’s case, that is.
Are there others? I don’t know. Maybe. Probably.
I don’t put anything past anyone any more.
Gary and Vicky have known each other for years.
Twenty years, give or take. They dated for a while, and in my opinion, back then he was one of the only truly nice guys she ever gave her time to.
Nice to me, anyway. There are photos of him holding me in his arms, smiling.
I was too young to remember, but when I found those photos, they made me smile.
But for all the photos there were of me and Gary, they were multiplied by photos of him with Robin.
They had the same smile, their faces pressed together, grinning into the camera.
Even though Robin was dead, those photos had me smouldering with jealousy.
I knew he was connected to Robin in a different way to me, a stronger way.
Like everyone does, Gary left Vicky eventually.
Had enough of her crazy, her cheating, just like all her friends and even family did.
He stuck around longer than any other man ever had, but I can’t say I blame him for eventually throwing in the towel, to be honest. I don’t think he ever truly forgave her for giving up the twins after they were born.
He’d been excited about being a dad, and I guess that’s why they came up with a plan to get one of them back.
However, Gary had the choice to escape from Vicky when things didn’t work out; I unfortunately didn’t.
I only realised his leaving coincided with Robin’s death when I really started investigating things.
Gary wasn’t bound to me like he was to Robin, so I guess he felt no shame in walking away from me when Robin was gone.
I was very much still a baby when he’d been around, and so naturally, I forgot all about him being in our lives.
It was only much later when I saw all those articles on the Rushmore case Vicky kept stashed away that I realised I knew his face.
At first, I assumed that was why she had all those articles.
Some sort of obsession with an ex. I could kind of relate to it.
Pete in sixth form kept me up at night, scrolling through his social media platforms — zooming in on his photos, wanting to know every tiny part of his life, just to feel included.
But this thing with Vicky, it was different.
The first time I went to see Gary, I don’t think he recognised me.
How could he? I wasn’t a baby any more. It was only when I’d slapped down some of those photographs of him holding me that his eyes grew wide, and not in a good way.
It wasn’t a happy reunion. He was terrified and quickly gathered up the pictures, flipping them face down.
As though looking at them was too much for him, or too risky.
Realising he was Robin and Skyla’s father, not just Vicky’s ex-boyfriend, astounded me at first. It was only later, when I’d managed to let it sink in that I learned I could use this information to my advantage.
‘I want to find my birth dad,’ I’d told him, eyeing him up, wanting to make sure he wasn’t my father too.
‘Tell me what I can do to help,’ he’d said — and I’ll admit it crushed me; his response made it clear he wasn’t my dad, too. I didn’t let him see that it hurt me, refused to let him get that close. Instead, I looked at him unflinching.
‘You’re high up in the law, right? You can find out things like this, can’t you?’ I’d hiked an eyebrow up, challenging him to say no. He didn’t. Couldn’t. I had him firmly by the balls.
‘I’ll look into it,’ he’d promised me, and that’s how, after months of waiting, I discovered James Rushmore was my birth dad. The man who had adopted the twins. The news had my head roiling.
I extracted all the information I could from Gary about the Rushmores.
Their address. What kind of cars they drove.
The kind of things he thought Skyla liked from what he’d seen being around her all these years.
I took what I could and infiltrated myself into her life first. Became her friend, started trying to get her to trust me.
To me, history is the biggest bore, but one thing Gary was certain that she liked was history, so I bought a copy of some crappy history book from Oxfam and pretended to trip right in front of her outside school.
The book landed at her feet and she jumped to help me up, scraping the book off the ground for me too.
‘You like Philippa Gregory?’ she’d asked hopefully as I’d dusted myself down. She absolutely stank of loneliness and a desperation to be liked. Pathetic, really.
‘Sure!’ I nodded, afraid to say more about an author I knew nothing about. I gave her a cheshire grin as I hugged the book to my chest.
Conversation flowed after that. I had her believe I had no idea who she was — I feigned ignorance, told her I avoid the news. ‘Too depressing,’ I’d said, and it wasn’t a lie.
Skyla thinking I didn’t know she was Skyla Rushmore from the big Robin Rushmore disappearance case made her warm to me quickly. She thought I genuinely just wanted to be her friend, no ulterior motives. Bless her.
James recognised me the moment he saw me.
He’d kept tabs on Vicky and me over the years, after Vicky had told him about me, I was sure.
For a horrifying moment I thought he might break — tell Bella exactly who I was and ruin the plan completely.
But he kept his mouth shut — and sometimes it felt like he was actually enjoying getting to know me, his real daughter, at last.