a phone call this morning on the way into work. He didn’t know I was behind him. I was about to call his name, but then his phone rang, so I didn’t. I eavesdropped instead. He spoke very briskly, as if to a business associate, and said “Are you ready for Daily Responses?”. It sounded kind of religious, like a ritual. Then I went inside and all the VersaNova receptionists were wearing badges with cheesy new-age mottos on them. Stupidly, I assumed Daily Responses was some kind of corporate mindfulness bullshit, but it isn’t. Lewis wasn’t talking to a colleague on the phone. He was talking to you.’
She stares at me blankly.
I go on, telling her what she already knows. ‘It is a ritual – I was right about that part. A daily ritual, I assume, if it’s called Daily Responses.’ Lewis giving it a name makes it even sicker. ‘I only realised later that the questions I heard him ask fit perfectly with the things I heard you say just over a week earlier, when you got out of your car in Hemingford Abbots in the middle of a phone call. No wonder you were crying. It’s a form of torture. Has it been going on ever since Georgina died?’
Flora nods. ‘Some days I can get through it fine. Others, I go to pieces. You must have seen a bad day.’
‘Daily Responses: three questions and three answers, the same each time. I heard Lewis ask you the questions this morning: “Where are you? Where should you be? And what are you?” And that day on Wyddial Lane, the first time I’d laid eyes on you in twelve years, I heard you recite the replies.’
Question 1: Where are you?
Answer: Home.
Question 2: Where should you be?
Answer: HMP Peterborough.
Question 3: And what are you?
Answer: Lucky. I’m very lucky.
‘He must have recorded you saying it at some point,’ I tell her. ‘When he rang me the first time, I heard your voice in the background saying answer number three.’
Flora turns on the tap and pours herself more water. She doesn’t offer me any.
‘Maybe he records it every time.’ I wouldn’t put it past Lewis to collect Flora’s Daily Responses and file them away. ‘He didn’t this morning, though. The thing is … I don’t think you do belong in prison, Flora. I don’t think you killed Georgina. Lewis did, didn’t he?’
‘I think so,’ she says.
‘What does that mean?’
She opens her mouth and lets out a sigh, long and loud. ‘It’s a relief to say it after so many years. I’ve never said it before. Yes, I think Lewis murdered Georgina. The story he told you about me and the wine was a lie. Not the wine part – that was true. I did have a couple of glasses. By then, I needed at least a glass a night just to keep me from screaming and falling apart. I kept thinking “There must be something I can do” but I had no idea what it might be. My husband hated me and one of our children, and had no intention of relenting. I couldn’t leave him. That would have meant leaving Thomas and Emily too – he’d never have let me take them away from him, I knew that. What I didn’t know was that he’d made a foolproof plan to take them away from me. Forever. And then make me suffer, forever. Killing Georgina was only stage one. There was plenty more to come.’
We stare at each other in silence. Now I see what she meant. To say, ‘That’s horrific,’ or ‘That’s evil,’ could never be enough.
‘Tell me about the night Georgina died,’ I say, though I’m not sure I can bear to hear it.
‘I started to feel unusually sleepy. I felt so bad, I had to mention it to Lewis, who accused me of drinking too much. Now it seems so obvious that he drugged me, but it didn’t occur to me then. However grim things were between us, I wouldn’t have suspected he’d do that. I thought I must be coming down with something. Lewis told me to go to bed and said he’d look after the kids. I didn’t want to leave Georgina with him, but I could hardly keep my eyes open.’
‘Did you fear he’d hurt her?’
‘Not in the way he did. I thought I knew exactly what he’d do. It was what he’d been doing since she was born: being Wonder-Dad to the other two and ignoring Georgina