‘You’ve been to Andalusia?’ Ray’s eyes lit up as he looped his arm through hers.
‘A long time ago.’
The sun’s heat drove them into the cooler air under the stone colonnades that led to the gallery where the unicorn tapestries hung. Under a row of dim lights, the famed panels of painstaking needlework depicted an age-old story. The hunt and capture of the mythical beast. The violent death and rebirth.
Erin paused in front of the tapestry of the unicorn in captivity, restored to life after death, yet still enclosed, its spirit subdued, as it lay under the branches of a pomegranate tree.
‘I lived in southern Spain for a year,’ she said, leaning in to examine the millions of tiny stitches that had gone into its making. ‘That’s where I ended up after leaving home at seventeen.’ She retraced her steps to begin the tapestry sequence again. ‘I found a job as a cleaner, and lived in a tiny shared flat near the Alhambra. The texture of the old stone walls and the scent of orange blossoms are what I remember most.’ She turned away from the dying unicorn, bleeding from its breast, and looked up at Ray. ‘I miss it, sometimes.’
A barrel-chested man in shorts and leather sandals entered the gallery and looked at them with barely concealed annoyance, as if expecting to be alone.
Ray held her arm and led her into the sunlight. ‘Shall we get something to drink?’
They passed under the colonnades through stripes of light and shadow, their feet tapping on the stones, before emerging into the museum’s courtyard café.
At a table next to the herb gardens, Ray pulled out a chair. ‘Is coffee okay, or would you rather something cold?’
Sapped by the heat, Erin struggled for a moment to remember where they were. She blinked twice, and the scene wavered before her eyes. A shifting crowd of visitors in shorts and T-shirts, chattering in English.
Her heart thumped and she was back in her body. You’re in New York. This is Ray.
‘Sorry,’ she said, dropping into a chair. ‘I’m feeling a bit dizzy.’ Her hands were clammy with sweat.
‘I’ll be right back.’ Ray made a beeline for the counter to get their drinks.
Erin looked round in vain for the toilets, until she spotted a discreet arrow pointing down a passage. In the loo, she locked the door and leaned against the sink, scanning her face in the mirror. Am I going mad? It was too much, seeing Graham and her mother on the same day. An avalanche of memories, transporting her back in time. The dark years when she’d been wrestled to the floor and shot full of drugs. Carted off to a locked ward. Abby, the wild-eyed girl with the scarred wrists, who’d attacked her with a piece of jagged metal, barely missing her jugular as she sliced it down Erin’s chest. And Nicky, so full of life. Finally free from Danfield after nearly a year, only to hack open the veins in her arm and bleed to death in the bath at home. No matter where she went or how far she ran, those memories were lodged like a parasite in Erin’s brain.
She splashed her face with cold water and returned to the table.
Ray stood and helped her into the chair. ‘Everything okay?’
At her place was a glass of iced tea and a chicken salad sandwich.
‘It must be the heat.’ She fanned her face.
‘Drink something. That should help.’ He sipped his cappuccino.
She held the cold glass against her cheek before taking a sip. ‘Thank you. I feel better already.’
They sat for a moment in silence. Around them, the chatter of tourists and the warble of birds rose and fell as shadows moved across the stone floor. By the time she finished her sandwich, the other patrons had drifted away, leaving the two of them alone.
When Ray returned to the table with more drinks, she decided to tell him everything. At this point, she had nothing to lose.
He handed her a glass of iced tea, and she fidgeted in the chair.
‘I haven’t been completely honest with you,’ she said, unable to meet his eyes. ‘I meant to tell you earlier, but the timing was never right.’ She lifted her glass and set it back on the table without taking a sip. ‘There was another reason for my unusual interest in the Stern case, besides the assessment I was asked to do. A personal one.’ She searched his face. ‘Cartwright isn’t the name I was born with. I changed it when I moved to London. My real name is… Marston.’ She studied Ray’s face. ‘Graham Marston, the guy who bullied Tim at school, was my brother.’
Ray’s shock seemed genuine. Either that, or he was an excellent actor.
‘Your brother?’ He was staring at her now, his upper lip pricked with sweat. ‘I don’t understand, I thought you’d grown up in England.’
She shut her eyes and breathed in the scent of lemon thyme and bee balm. Light and shadow flickered across her lids. ‘When I was thirteen, my mother began telling people I was mentally disturbed. My guess is, she was putting something in my food that made me act strange. Your average garden is full of plant alkaloids that can mimic symptoms of psychosis.’ Erin waved her hand at the herb garden. ‘Anyway, with my brother’s help, she convinced a psychiatrist I was deranged, telling him she was afraid of me, and about how she’d woken to find me standing over her with a knife in my hand. I was taken away in the middle of the night and spent two years in a psychiatric hospital on a locked ward.’
Ray reached for her hand, but she pulled away.
‘You’ve been so sweet to me… and I’ve done nothing but lie to you.’
His face was creased with concern.
She pressed the cold glass to her throat. ‘My aunt saved me. My mother’s sister, but the two women are as different as day is to night. When she discovered where I
