In the car park that day in Huntingdon, Yanina didn’t flinch. She played her part so convincingly, fully believing in her assured victory. She was the outraged, innocent car owner, shocked to find a stranger in her car. Except she wasn’t shocked at all. The four of them will have agreed that she should return to the car park dressed in Flora’s clothes, to make me think I was losing my mind. Yanina might not have known she’d find me inside the Range Rover, but she knew I’d be there.
They must all have been prepared for me to say, ‘Why are you wearing Flora’s clothes? I’ve just seen her wearing those same clothes. Don’t tell me I haven’t.’ Yanina was trusted, evidently, to be convincingly aghast and uncomprehending if I reacted in that way.
Lewis had no worries about Kevin and Yanina. That’s why they were allowed to invite me and Dominic to Newnham House. Flora, Lewis decided, was the only possible weak link, the one who couldn’t necessarily be trusted not to let something slip. Better to move her to a different country, to be on the safe side. Meanwhile, he knew he could trust Kevin and Yanina to take charge of all the lying that needed to be done in England, while he and Flora lied with a matching confidence and determination in America – determination to win, to make sure that what they’ve all hidden so successfully remains hidden.
The terrible secret. What could it be? If I’m right about everything I think I’ve worked out so far, then someone might be in prison … but who? And for what?
The crime involved, because it has to be a crime, must be worse than what Lewis and Flora told me – worse than Flora accidentally killing Georgina and disowning her family, worse than her and Lewis misleading the authorities about the cause of Georgina’s death. No one trying to hide their guilt would invent something more likely to land them in jail than the truth. Lewis Braid is hardly an ordinary person, but I can’t see any reason why even he would do that.
Which means the truth must represent a greater threat than the story he and Flora told me. And Kevin Cater and Yanina know exactly what it is. There’s no detail they don’t know. They’re not being deceived, like me, or even partially deceived. They’re fully informed and trusted participants in the deception. Whatever’s going on, they and Flora and Lewis are equal partners.
Great. Good luck convincing PC Pollard of all this, or anyone else who can do anything about it.
My stomach rumbles. I tell myself I can find the menu and order food any time. I don’t need to do it right now. There’s still so much I need to think through …
Flora in the background when Lewis first phoned me, saying that she was lucky. She wasn’t in Florida then. It was the day before I saw her in the car park in Huntingdon. Which means Lewis had a recording of her voice saying, ‘I’m lucky’, because there’s no way she was there with him in Delray Beach at the time.
Why would he have that on tape? It seems too much of a coincidence that he’d record her saying the very same words I heard her say outside Newnham House. Though a bigger question, maybe, is why she would arrive home on a Saturday morning and have that particular conversation while getting out of the car. If Flora needed to talk to someone and say not what I thought I heard her say at first but what I now believe I heard her say that day, then why wouldn’t she wait until she was …
My heart starts to thud as another answer slots into place.
Nobody’s in prison. No one at all.
Adrenaline combined with an empty stomach makes me feel light-headed. It’s so obvious, once you think of it. It’s only taken me this long to see it because of an assumption I made, a stupid one. Then, immediately after leaping to the wrong conclusion, I found plenty of evidence that seemed to prove me right. It wasn’t evidence of anything, though. I just chose to believe it was.
Now I know what was really going on. But what does it mean? How does it alter or add to the overall picture? I still don’t know that.
I need to talk to Flora again. Whether she wants to talk to me or not, she’s going to have to. And she will because …
Because people can make Flora do things she doesn’t want to do. Lewis can, Kevin and Yanina can, and you can too.
If the answer that’s just come to me is right, and it has to be, then Flora can’t be playing her part in all this by choice. Can she?
No. You know she isn’t. You saw her face. You know her. She’s your best friend.
I pick up my phone and ring Lou back. ‘Can you access school records from home?’ I ask her.
‘I’m not at home—’ she starts to say.
‘Can you access the records from wherever you are?’
‘Only my emails and the main school website, which is public. Why?’
‘Could you get into the building if you went now?’
‘Yes, I’ve got the code for the—’
‘I need you to go. I need the mobile number you’ve got on record for Jeanette Cater. That’ll be on a database somewhere, won’t it?’
‘It should be. We encourage all parents to give us all their contact numbers. We require it, actually. Doesn’t mean all of them do it, though.’
‘I need that number,’ I tell her.
‘Is it so important that it can’t wait till tomorrow?’ she asks. ‘You can say if it is.’
I don’t know how to answer. Will anything terrible happen tonight if I don’t make Lou interrupt her evening?
‘It is, then,’ she says, when I fail to answer. ‘It’s fine. I’ll go in now. Sit tight. I’ll let you know, soon as I can.’
I pace up and down the room, turn on the TV and mute it immediately like Zannah and Ben do at home. I press the Channel Plus button on the remote control until I find something I can bear to look at: a kitchen. Two men are sitting at a table while a large older woman, a redhead with her hair pulled back into a ponytail, walks around behind them. I stare for a few seconds, then switch the TV off again.
I have no idea how to pass the time between now and when Lou rings me back. The desire to eat has left me completely. I don’t think I can stay in the room either.
I grab my phone and key card and head downstairs and outside. I walk around the building, through the lush greenery of the gardens towards the pool terrace, where I soon realise I can’t stay. Everyone here looks far too relaxed, sprawled out on loungers with their eyes closed, cocktails in fruit-decorated glasses on tables next to them.
I walk around to the front of the hotel and cross the road, planning to go back to the beach, but halfway along the narrow, roped-off path I change my mind and turn back.
Finally I admit it to myself: I have no idea what I’m doing or where I’m going. This isn’t good. I need to get my head together if I’m going to speak to Flora again. Instead of running around frenetically, I need to keep still and focus.
I force myself to walk slowly back to my room, breathing even more slowly. By the time I get back, I feel a little more composed. As if to reward me for sensibly taking myself in hand, my phone starts to buzz in my pocket as I push open the door to my room.
‘Lou!’ I hope it’s her. I didn’t stop to look.
‘You’re in luck,’ she says. ‘I’ve got Jeanette’s mobile number for you.’