But Sarah… To wake like that. What must it have been like, regaining consciousness? Waking? Being told Grant was dead?
Being told that Grant had stated that it was all her fault.
‘They believed it when you agreed you were the driver?’ Alistair whispered, and Sarah gave a bitter laugh.
‘No. I told you. They didn’t have to believe me. Not one person has ever asked me whether I was driving. No one. They believed Grant. How much easier to believe than to ask questions? The coroner’s verdict was that the car had spun out when it hit ice. An accident. No need for questions.’
‘But-’
‘Why do you think I decided to be a forensic pathologist?’ she demanded, her voice laced with the bitterness of years. ‘When the people at work shunned me because of what I’d done and I decided to change careers it was the obvious choice. I figured if I could stop one person going through what I’d gone through it’d be worthwhile. Join the police force, study forensic medicine, save the world.’ She tried to smile, but there was an obvious and dreadful pain behind the smile. A pain he couldn’t believe he’d missed until now.
‘They were all so stupid,’ she whispered. ‘They believed. And what was I to do?’
‘You could have told the truth.’
‘Right.’
‘You could have.’
‘Could I? Could I really? Could I have told the world that not only was Grant dead but he was a liar? Could I have told your parents that? Shattered their world still more? Could I have told you? I knew how unwell your father was-he was the nicest man. And you…’
Her voice faded almost to nothing, but then she regrouped-just a little. ‘How would you have felt?’ she asked, ‘Not only was your brother dead, but he’d been driving drunk and in the few minutes when he should have been trying to stop my leg from bleeding he’d carted me around to the other side of the car and made it seem as if I was the driver. Afterwards I went to see the car, where it lay in the wrecker’s yard. If you knew what you were looking for it was so obvious. Do you know, he even wiped my blood from the passenger door? The doctors told me I almost died through blood loss. I lay bleeding while he covered his traces. But then he paid the ultimate price. He died.’
Alistair thought it through, and thought some more. It didn’t help. His head felt as if it was close to bursting. Whichever way he looked at it he felt sick. Unbearably ill.
He’d seen the car. He hadn’t looked. He hadn’t asked questions. And Sarah had paid the price.
‘You’ve carried this all this time.’
‘I had no choice. Grant gave me this legacy.’
‘But you…’ He stared at her in the moonlight, trying to see… Trying to see what? He didn’t know. ‘You were on drugs…’
Anger flared then. Real and dreadful. ‘Does that make it easier to bear? Your brother blamed me but, hey, it’s okay, she’s just a hophead?’
‘No, but-’
‘You want to know the truth about that, too?’
He didn’t. But he must. ‘Yes.’
‘It was because of my mother,’ she told him.
She stood then, pushing herself up, walking away and looking out to sea-as if she couldn’t bear to face him.
‘I’ve already told you my mother was an alcoholic,’ she said. ‘She never got over my father walking out on her, and that happened before I was born. She suffered from depression, exacerbated by the alcohol. She was in and out of nursing homes from the time I was tiny-on uppers, downers, the works. She and I hadn’t had any real relationship for years, though I tried. Heaven knows I tried. Anyway, that night she rang me, when I was working at the hospital, and said I had to come around to her apartment. She had a surprise for me. Something she wanted me to share with my father. She was insistent. I had to come. God help me, she even sounded excited.’
‘And?’ Alistair found he was holding his breath, and he didn’t know how long he’d been holding it. For ten minutes? Longer. An eternity. He took a long, searing breath and tried to concentrate.
‘She’d suicided,’ Sarah said flatly. ‘Of course she had. Some things are inevitable. It was her last sick joke on the world. On me. On life. She’d planned it so I’d find her and I had to cut her down. She thought…she’d have thought that by hurting me she’d somehow hurt my father. The sick thing is that he couldn’t have cared less.’
‘Oh, Sarah…’
‘I called the police, the undertaker-everyone,’ she said. ‘A doctor arrived at some stage. I was… Well, I was in a mess. Despite everything, I still loved her. The doctor who came knew Grant, and he knew who I was. He thought I was still… Well, he knew about our relationship. So he called him and Grant came.’ She gave a shrug of her shoulders, eloquently expressive in the moonlight. ‘That sort of thing-drama, suicide, me being distraught-would have appealed to Grant. I knew him pretty well by then. Too well. Because of my father, the suicide would hit the headlines, and Grant knew that. It was what he most liked about me. My famous father. It had taken me a while to see, but I knew it then, and I never should have let him be called. If the paparazzi were nearby then Grant would relish it. Only there weren’t any paparazzi. My mother had got past the stage where the press were interested.’
Alistair was scarcely breathing. At the time of Grant’s death he hadn’t seen either of them for a couple of months, but what she was saying made sense. Every time Grant had talked about Sarah the name of her famous father had come up.
Would Grant have loved Sarah if her father wasn’t famous? He couldn’t ask. But he knew the answer.
‘Couldn’t your father come?’ he asked her, and watched as she shook her head, bleakness intensifying.
‘What do you think? He was in Switzerland-with another of his women. Being famous. Sure, there’d be paparazzi where my father was, but the suicide of an elderly, drunk ex-wife could be hushed up. I told Grant that was what I wanted-that things be kept quiet-and he had to agree.’
‘I see.’
‘Do you?’ she asked bleakly. ‘Do you? Because that’s how it happened. He’d been drinking, and I was too upset to think straight. He came into my mother’s apartment and he acted the real doctor. Specialist in charge. Which, of course, he was. “I’ll take charge,” he told everyone. He gave me sedatives and I didn’t argue. “I’ll take you home,” he said, and that was the last thing I remember.’
‘Why did I know nothing of this?’ Alistair felt sick. To say he was appalled… There was no way he could begin to describe how he felt. His world was shifting under his feet. Grant. Grant had done this-to Sarah. ‘Why did I know nothing about what happened to your mother?’
‘You didn’t ask,’ Sarah told him, weary now beyond belief. ‘I told you. Nobody asked. No one came near me. I made my decision to wear Grant’s blame because I didn’t think your parents could bear it if I didn’t. I wore it. And you all just accepted it. Because, of course, you loved Grant. Everyone loved Grant. God help me, for a short, short time I thought I did, too. But I’ve paid for that loving. It’s a long time since I loved him, but everyone else still does.’
There was an end to it. Her voice faded to nothing. Her world seemed to fade to nothing. Or maybe it had faded a long time ago.
Sarah stood looking out to sea for a long, long time, while Alistair stayed silent behind her.
There was nothing to be said. Nothing to say. She’d made her decision six years ago. If she’d had a choice that decision would have been held for life. But now…
Grant was his twin. What she’d just done to Alistair was inexcusable. But he’d asked. He’d probed as no one else ever had.
‘I’m going back to the house,’ she said at last, and she walked away without looking back.
Not even Flotsam followed her.
CHAPTER NINE
IT WAS almost two in the morning before he came to her.
