We’d find out in the emergency room that the headaches and the vomiting we were all experiencing were due to gas poisoning. Dad had disabled the pilot light on the oven, he’d put out the flame and the house had slowly been filling with gas for hours while we slept. The bitter smell of it permeating every room of the house.
They said at the inquest he meant to take us all with him. A last-minute idea, they speculated—otherwise why would he have bothered to write us all notes? Why indeed? After two years of waiting, I found that mine had said only:
Marni-marn,
I love you. I hope one day you’ll be able to understand.
Your Dad
He thought we’d be better off dead than without him, that was what he had decided for us. That we were his property to dispose of in any way he liked. We weren’t meant to read those letters; he wrote them to our dead bodies. We were all meant to go in our sleep but he ran out of time and shot himself first.
Except I don’t think he did. I don’t think the man with no face in the study was my father. Which I would later tell the police and social workers. I saw him put on his coat, I’d tell them. I saw him leave the house. He told me to go back to bed. Whoever that person was in the study, they weren’t my father, that body wasn’t wearing a coat. You never found his coat.
They’d tell me it was a hallucination from the gas poisoning, they’d tell me they’d done a DNA test on the remains, they’d tell me to stop, but someone believed me. The press believed me. And at first, I was glad at least someone did. But they wanted to know, if he wasn’t dead, where had he gone? They demanded to know where he’d gone with all that money. They wanted to track him down and make him pay. And they just wouldn’t stop asking. Even after I told the police I believed them, that I must have imagined seeing him. Even after I told everyone I’d made a mistake. They just kept asking and then they got angry and it became dangerous. That’s when we had to leave.
I know logically I didn’t see him. That logically I couldn’t have seen him leave…but…I did, didn’t I?
Shards of memories from that night. Recalled over and over and over. Blood everywhere; I stare at it transfixed. Mum crouched on the floor, her mouth open in a silent scream, spit stringing straight down onto our floorboards. Her eyes searching the approaching faces of police for some kind of answer as to why.
They pull her roughly backward, and like a rag doll she lets herself be carried off, no resistance, something soft and helpless in a sea of uniforms. The world slows right down as they pour into the study around me, finally blocking my view.
As I’ve said, nobody becomes a psychiatrist by accident.
35
DR. EMMA LEWIS
DAY 12—REPERCUSSIONS
Officer Graceford arrives at 7 A.M., bringing the stack of newspapers I’d requested through Chris.
Not yet ready to face the TV coverage, I pore over the papers with my bandaged palms as Chris finishes cooking us breakfast. He wouldn’t take no for an answer after calling a company to replace the glass in the basement window.
Graceford eyes the apron he’s wearing over his uniform and turns back to me briskly. “I’ll be covering you at the hospital if you want to go in today,” she explains. “If you don’t feel up to it, you can stay here in the lodge with Chris until things calm down. It’s totally up to you.” She smiles understandingly and I want to hug her for her lack of judgment either way.
“I’ll have a think about it.”
She nods and throws a look back to Chris; his hair is still rumpled from sleep. “I’ll be keeping an eye on things at the hospital, Chris. Radio me if anything changes here.”
“Will do,” he says, trying to remain dignified while holding a spatula.
After Graceford leaves I take a deep breath and flick on the TV. Footage of my face, me walking out of the hospital, furtive, guilty, though of what I do not know. I guess I have a guilty face. The news anchors talk about me, about Dad.
“The daughter of the late Charles Beaufort, who is estimated to have misappropriated approximately £875,000 from the July seventh victims’ charity, as well as other sums from various sources, reemerged yesterday after fourteen years in hiding. Marni Beaufort, now Dr. Emma Lewis, has been working within the NHS under an assumed name.”
Bloody hell. They make it sound like I’m pretending to be a doctor.
“News sources yesterday uncovered that Marni Beaufort is currently the lead specialist on another case garnering public interest—the mysterious case of Mr. Nobody, the unknown man found wandering on a beach in Norfolk, close to Dr. Lewis’s own childhood home. Although currently not under investigation, Marni Beaufort was believed by many during the 2005 inquest into Charles Beaufort’s misappropriation of funds and subsequent death to be involved in a cover-up surrounding his suicide. Several sources at the time of the investigation expressed concerns that the body discovered in the Beaufort family home might not have been that of Charles Beaufort and that Charles Beaufort might well still be at large. However, DNA samples analyzed at the scene and during the subsequent police investigation did match with that of Mr. Beaufort.”
I feel Chris’s eyes on me. I feel his concern.
I can almost hear his thoughts. Do I think he’s still alive too? That’s what he wants to know. That’s what everyone wants to know.
Two questions, over and over. Do I think he’s still alive? And, where is the money?
I avoid Chris’s gaze and focus on the images as they flash up on the screen. Footage from 2005. Shots of sixteen-year-old me cowed by the attention, my terrified expression as alert as a wounded animal’s. Shots of the July 7 bombings, interviews with victims about the money he stole.
I flip the channel.
A floppy-haired man in a navy blazer holds forth. “Yes, that’s all very well, Susannah, but what if Charles Beaufort is still alive and out there somewhere, living off all this stolen money he’s accrued? I just think with today’s technology it’s worth looking at the evidence again. What harm could it do? If he’s dead, he’s dead. All I’m saying is, I think it might be worth the police reopening the case. There were contradictory facts! The daughter saw him leaving the house. That was in her original statement. It was only afterward the story changed. I definitely think it’s worth another look.”
The female presenter gives him an incredulous yet indulgent look. “But come on, Jeremy, didn’t he attempt to murder the whole family? Why would any one of them be helping him get away with that? They’d have to be mad.”
“Actually, not really—if you think about it, it makes perfect sense. The carbon monoxide levels in the house were high but nowhere near fatal yet. It may have been part of the ruse. Get the family in on it. If he’d really wanted to kill them all, he could have increased the flow, and he had a gun, didn’t he—”