The doctor, to her credit, answered the first six to ten times, and has now taken to pretending Bella isn’t talking. I can’t speak. Mum is shedding tears of gratitude, Dad keeps patting Logan’s shoulder and nodding like they’re communicating without words. My brother lies bare-chested in the bed, a bit removed from it all. He keeps staring at me, though. As though he could hear me when he was in his coma and he knows that I know everything about his relationship, about the abuse, and he’s scared I’m going to voice it in front of everyone.
He’s probably scared it will make him seem less of a man in front of the four people he wants to maintain his masculine image with.
‘You can only have a few more minutes,’ the doctor says to no one in particular. ‘Logan needs to rest.’
‘That’s all I’ve been doing,’ Logan says. His voice is croaky; musted and fusted by his time unconscious.
‘Maybe so, but you still need to rest. If you want to recover quickly and get out of here as soon as possible, I suggest you listen to what I’m telling you – all of you – and get some real rest. Coma sleep is not rest.’
Once the doctor has gone, presumably to find a nurse who is scarier and who we’re more likely to listen to, we all focus on him again.
‘Who did this?’ Dad asks him now we’re alone and it’s safe to ask because the people in the room love him. ‘The police have been working on it, but they’ve been waiting to find out from you who did this to you.’
Logan looks at Bella, then at me. Ashamed, cornered. A little scared.
‘It’s all right,’ I say gently. ‘We all know about you and Verity Gillmare. We all know that you were involved and that you didn’t always have the smoothest of relationships.’ I am trying to talk around the subject because the other three don’t know what I took to the police. They don’t know the contents of the USB drive. They don’t know I was involved at all in finding the ‘additional evidence’ that is helping the police to take their enquiries in a different direction.
‘Who did this to you, boy?’ Dad asks again. And the affection, the concern he has in his voice for his third-born unplugs a well of sadness in my chest. I wish my dad was capable of feeling that for me. I push those thoughts to one side. It’s not about me, it’s about Logan and finding out who did this to him. Well, confirming who did this to him. We all know.
‘I don’t want to say,’ Logan eventually says.
‘Stop protecting her,’ I say sternly. It’ll do no one any good to protect her – she’ll only do it to the next person who crosses her path. ‘Just stop protecting her. She could have killed you.’
‘It’s not like that,’ Logan says, and shifts his position. Pain shoots across his face.
‘Logan, look at—’
‘Love, you have to tell us who did this. We need to keep you safe.’ This is Mum, rubbing his hand and trying to get him to open up. Would I have talked if she had done that to me? Would I have confessed all?
‘It’s not that simple, Mum,’ Logan croaks. He’s exhausted, there’s no hiding it. Soon a nurse will come and chase us out so he can get some proper rest. And then this opportunity will be lost. He’ll sit and he’ll think and his first instinct to protect her will kick in. Our window of opportunity is dwindling. Left alone, he will stop himself from telling.
‘Don’t do this, Logan. Just tell the truth. No lies, no hiding, no twisting. Just tell the truth. Tell who did this to you.’ Bella is direct, sharp. Her voice is like a precision laser, carving out the truth hidden in all our words in a clear, concise manner. She knows him better than any of us; she knows what to say to get him to open up. ‘Just do it. Please.’
‘Please,’ Mum adds.
‘Please, son,’ says Dad.
Logan looks to me for the final word and he gets none. I just stare at him. The decision is his, but telling is better than not.
My brother closes his eyes and is very still for more than a few moments. I can hear the nurse’s footsteps as she approaches, tasked with getting rid of us. It’s now or it’s at some unspecified point in the future. The footsteps are coming nearer, she is on her way to our room for sure. I want to hurry him up, but say nothing, do nothing. Neither do the others. It has to come from him now.
The footsteps are almost here. I can practically feel her weight leaning against the door to push it open.
‘From what I can remember,’ he says quietly as the door swings open, ‘it was Verity Gillmare.’
Thank you, Logan, I think. That bitch is all mine.
verity
Now
A knock, a sharp single knock is how it starts.
Then knuckles rapping on the wooden panel that separates the two pieces of stained glass in the front door. By the time I have put down my book and swung my legs off the bed, it is a braying; the loud, angry hammering of someone who hasn’t been answered quick enough and is now both trying to draw as much attention to themselves as possible or enter the house the hard way.
I reach the door a fraction before Mum, two fractions before Conrad, and as the door pops open it reveals a woman with a familiar face, and who is terrifying because of her familiarity not despite it.
‘You!’ she snarls, her finger raised, the other hand a lump of fist at her side. She comes through the door at such a speed I have to step back, straight into the solid form of my mother. ‘You did this!’ Her voice is louder than her knocking. Mum steps back, which is essential because Poppy Carlisle is coming at me, finger raised, fist ready to lay me out.
I’m not scared of her physically, I’m terrified of who she is and what she represents. Logan has two sisters, two parents, friends for whom he is the world. Poppy Carlisle could just be the advance party for all I know. Whether there are others coming or not, she is terrifying.
I don’t even notice Mum moving, I’m fixated on the woman who seems to be growing exponentially by the second as her anger unleashes itself at me. Then I realise Mum has been moving because I am being shifted behind her, so she can take my place in front of the raging woman. Mum pushes me backwards slightly, into Con’s arms and then steps forward to take on the woman who is screaming, filling up our corridor with her fury.
‘You couldn’t stand it that he didn’t want to be with you any more. That he had finally got the courage together to leave and you did what all people like you do: tried to make him sorry! How could you do that to him? How could you?’
She comes forward and I shrink back against my brother but Mum doesn’t move, doesn’t flinch, doesn’t step back from the onslaught.
‘You’re not going to get away with this! Any of it. Your mother might have got away with murder, escaped prison on pure luck, but you’re not going to! I’m going to make sure you pay for this. I’m going to make sure you pay for everything!’
‘Don’t talk to my daughter like that, Poppy,’ Mum states calmly.
Poppy Carlisle is scary, a ball of flaming anger, but Mum . . . the quiet menace in my mother is all the more frightening. ‘If you have something you’d like to discuss with her, then by all means talk, shout if you must, but don’t threaten her.’