you see?’ I ask, my voice cracking. ‘Tell me.’ Why didn’t I see it, whatever it was? I spent hours looking.
‘You’re pathetic, Connie,’ Fran says matter-of-factly, ignoring my question. ‘You sit there thinking the worst of everyone, harbouring your secret grudges and resentments, blowing stupid things up into huge problems and dwelling on them endlessly, making sure never to say a word about what’s bothering you so that no one has the chance to explain that they’re not quite as bad as you’ve decided they are.’
‘What did you see, Fran?’
‘You flinch every time Mum opens her mouth, as if she’s the devil in oven gloves. Yes, she can be annoying, but you should do what I do: tell her to get a grip and then move on, forget it. Same with Dad. Tell all of us to piss off if you want to, but be upfront about it, for God’s sake.’
She’s clever, Fran. She makes everything sound so manageable and normal. Listening to her, I could almost believe that the Monk family was an entirely harmless organisation, that its members were allowed to leave Little Holling as and when they pleased, and would suffer no adverse effects if they chose to exercise that freedom.
‘Tell me what you saw,’ I say again.
‘You tell me first,’ Fran says, leaning towards me across the table. ‘Everything. 11 Bentley Grove – what’s the deal? For fuck’s sake, Con, are we sisters or strangers? Let me know, because I can be either. It’s your choice.’
‘Yes. It is, isn’t it?’ She expects me to refuse. I’m going to surprise her. She asked to know everything, so everything is what I’ll give her: not only the bare facts, but all the tiny permutations of possibility, all the ways in which I’ve changed my mind and then changed it back, sometimes ten or twelve times a day. As I talk, I begin to enjoy myself. I know from my own experience of the last six miserable months that this story I’m telling offers no narrative satisfaction whatsoever, only a series of insoluble problems. Let Fran be as confused as I am; let her be drawn into the nightmare that never ends. I wonder if she can hear the sadistic relish in my voice as I make sure not to spare her one single detail.
When I finish, finally, she doesn’t look as confused as I hoped she would. She doesn’t look surprised, or shocked. ‘So did you ring him?’ she says.
‘Who?’
‘Stephen Gilligan – the SG that Kit was supposed to have had a meeting with on 13 May. Did you ring his secretary, Joanne Thingummy?’
‘Joanne Biss. No. I was going to, in the taxi on the way home, but then you turned up, and I . . .’
Fran isn’t listening. She has whipped out her mobile phone, and is already asking for a number for London Allied Capital’s Canary Wharf office. I close my eyes and wait, thinking about what Alice said: that I don’t really want to know the truth about Kit. Is she right? Would I have phoned Stephen Gilligan, if it had been left to me? Was that why I had a dizzy attack as soon as I left the police station, so that I could avoid making the call?
‘Joanne Biss, please,’ says Fran. ‘That’s fine. I’m happy to wait.’
‘I would have rung,’ I tell her. ‘When I got home.’ She flashes me a sceptical look. I can imagine exactly what she’s thinking. ‘Why should I waste money on a private detective when I can stake out Kit’s Limehouse flat myself, for free?’ I say defensively.
‘Have you?’ Fran asks.
‘I’ve driven there in the evening two or three times, sat outside in the dark. Kit never closes the lounge curtains, and the flat’s on the ground floor. I ring him from the car park outside, pretending I’m calling from home. I watch him through the window, drinking red wine while he talks to me – the same kind he drinks at home. There’s never been anyone else there with him.’ And when he smiles, it’s the same affectionate smile I see on his face when he knows I’m watching. I can’t bring myself to share this fact with my sister; it’s important to me, and I don’t trust her with it.
‘Two or three times doesn’t prove anything,’ she says dismissively.
‘I’ve spent hours waiting in my car on Bentley Grove for him to come out of number 11. He never does.’ Why am I trying to convince Fran