Mimi went after Gary,’ Leo said. ‘Gary says she was raving on about him seeing her in the woods, but he didn’t see a thing. He thought he heard a noise, but when he turned to look, his headlights were shining straight into his eyes. I guess he wanted to get out of there pretty quickly too.’
Leo’s lip curled in disgust, as it did every time she mentioned Gary’s name. She picked up her coffee cup, and the sisters were quiet for a moment, each lost in her own thoughts.
‘Does Tom know how Mimi tracked Abbie down?’ Ellie asked.
‘There’s only so much he’s prepared to tell me, but he did say that although Abbie’s surname had changed, her birthday was the same. Just one Facebook app apparently, and the rest was easy, especially for somebody who had spent their years in prison studying IT. They think she’d never planned to meet Abbie, just be her friend in disguise. “Chloe” could have stayed in touch for years with nobody being any the wiser. She’d just intended to stalk her daughter - on and offline. The opportunity on that Friday just fell into her lap. But Abbie rejected her. God knows what Mimi would have done if Abbie hadn’t escaped.’
Ellie was stirring her coffee entirely unnecessarily, but there was something she wanted to ask Leo and she wasn’t sure how she was going to take it.
‘I was wondering, Leo, whether you were struggling to sleep because of the baby.’
Leo turned to Ellie with a puzzled look.
‘What baby?’
‘Mimi’s baby. Oh, we know now that there wasn’t a baby, but when you crashed the car you knew that you were probably going to kill a baby, and that must have been incredibly hard.’
To Ellie’s amazement, Leo laughed.
‘I knew there was no baby, Ellie. I’d known since the day before but hadn’t got round to telling you. There was always so much else going on. Mimi had a giant pack of Tampax in her shopping bag. It was a Mimi type con to keep Pat with her until it was too late for him to do anything else. I don’t know what I would have done if she’d actually been pregnant, but I’d rather not think about it. I didn’t intend to kill her either, you know. I thought I could knock her unconscious so that I could get away. But she would have killed me without hesitation.’
‘I can’t believe that Pat actually lived with her. Slept with her even.’ Ellie shuddered. ‘What the hell was he thinking? There’s no way that Georgia’s going to take him back now, even though she feels sorry for him. But sympathy doesn’t seem such a good basis for a marriage.’
Ellie leant down and moved the small table away so she could shuffle along the bench to sit closer to Leo. She leaned slightly against her sister’s good arm, and was pleased that Leo didn’t move away. If anything, she moved nearer.
‘Thanks for finding out about Dad, Leo. I know you’ve not told me everything, but that’s fine. I don’t want to hear it just now. I’ll let you know when I’m ready to hear the rest. I trust you, and I know you won’t hold anything back when the time is right. At least I can stop expecting him to make an appearance, and we can decide whether to carry on living here, or to move. I know you didn’t think much of him, but he’s the only dad we’ll ever have. Don’t you mourn him - not even a bit?’
Ellie knew immediately she shouldn’t have asked that question. Leo’s face appeared to be carved of stone.
‘No. He was married to your mother, but in spite of that he came and swept my mum off her feet. Ellie, she was only seventeen when he got her pregnant with me. Seventeen. That’s only three years older than Abbie. And he was thirty-six. Then he went through a mock marriage and lived a lie for all those years. I don’t think my mum had a clue.’
Ellie nodded her head. She knew that Leo was going to take some persuading to see a good side in him.
‘But he made a mistake, Leo. Look at Max and me recently. We’ve made mistakes, but you don’t think that we’re devils in disguise, do you?’
‘Of course I don’t. But there are mistakes and mistakes. I might have forgiven him that one, because my mum was so very special, but I couldn’t forgive his neglect.