Because today I’m going to die. I can say that now, I can think it, and most of the fear has gone. Maybe that’s because I’m more like Red than Andy now: institutionalised, beyond redemption. But I’m not brave enough to drown. It would look worse for Ross if I did, but every time I think of it I see that poison taster, choking on a black and boiling pearl, and I know I can’t do it. I’ve been stockpiling my antidepressants. And there are the pills in Ross’s bedside drawer. I have to hope that they’ll be enough. I have to hope that this time the plan is foolproof; this time we both get out and stay out. Maybe you think suicide is a pretty fucked-up way to do it. I don’t. I might have been faking it last time, but it worked. You escaped. All I want, to paraphrase Stephen King, is for you to get busy living while I get busy dying. Or, if that’s too flip for you, maybe this is better. Think of a snowy day in the pantry. Mum sitting on the windowsill and reading Sydney Carton’s last words before he was taken down to La Place de la Révolution. ‘It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done.’ Because it is. It makes me happy, at peace for the first time in years.
There’s just one thing that doesn’t. In doing all this, planning all this, I haven’t given you a choice. We’ve never had many choices. No one ever thought to allow us any. This letter is your choice. It proves what I planned, what I did. You could show it to the police, or Ross’s lawyer – because even if everything has gone to plan, I know he’ll appeal; he’ll never give up.
Maybe you still don’t trust or believe a single word I say. But I hope you’ve remembered the truth anyway. I hope the house, the clues, the treasure hunt, the diary have worked, have forced you to face what really happened that last night of our first life in a way that I couldn’t have by only telling you – that the person who was lying to you was you. Because I want you to choose what happens next. The Black Spot is yours. It’s up to you what you do with it. Don’t think about me. And never think that whatever choice you make is the wrong one.
Maybe I’m not so different from Mum after all. She told me once that a white lie was just a lie that hadn’t got dirty yet, and I guess that’s true – I guess I’m pretty dirty now. But that doesn’t matter. Nothing matters except this: once upon a time, you saved my life. Now I’m saving yours. That’s it. That’s all.
Please. Don’t stop believing in me.
All my love,
El xxx
CHAPTER 32
I take El to Lochend Cemetery to visit Mum. Set her down next to the headstone. Her urn is a great ugly thing: stern ceramic curlicues and brown flowers. It’s become my security blanket.
I replace my white roses with a fresh bunch of red ones, look down at the grass, the headstone, the ornate gold writing. GONE BUT NEVER FORGOTTEN. And although I’m trying very hard these days not to forget anything at all, here I make an exception. I don’t look at his name, I don’t think of his face. I don’t think of him lying next to Mum in the dark until they’re both dust and earth and old stories.
I remember thinking that El loved A Tale of Two Cities because of its horror, its cruelty; Madame Defarge and her knitting needles. I remember standing in the sunlight of the back garden and thinking: She’s had my life for years. She’s stolen it. And being furious instead of grateful. Horrified. I don’t deserve any of it. Mum’s sacrifice, El’s sacrifice. All their terrible years of suffering, while I wallowed in self-pity and wilful ignorance; a reflection in a mirror, a shadow on the ground, dark and flat and impermanent.
*
I hold a memorial. Put a notice in the paper. Plant a tree for El in public gardens close to Granton Harbour and the wide Forth. I make a terrible and stumbling speech mostly to people I don’t know, who afterwards give me a half-arsed clap. I notice Marie standing maybe twenty yards away, but she moves no closer. And when I look again a few minutes later, she’s gone.
Some people come back to the pub, but few stay beyond the complimentary drinks and sandwiches. Within a couple of hours, there’s only Vik and Anna left. We talk about El, and it’s less awkward than I imagined. By unspoken agreement, Vik and I don’t talk about what she had him do. We don’t talk about Ross or the trial. We talk about the El that we knew, the El that we miss. I stick to Diet Coke because I’d just about kill for a vodka. And when Rafiq pushes open the pub door with Logan in tow, I’m relaxed enough to be glad.
‘That was a good speech, Cat,’ Rafiq says.
‘You were there?’
Rafiq smiles. ‘Polis always loiter at the back like a bad smell.’
‘Double scotch, is it, boss?’ Logan mutters. And I realise, with a ridiculous pang, that he’s shaved off his daft hair.
‘Naw,’ she says, giving him the stink eye. ‘Double Talisker.’ She looks at us. ‘Anyone else? He’s paying.’
After Logan stomps off to the bar, Rafiq moves closer to the table, leans against the back of an empty chair.
‘We’ll just be staying for the one,’ she says. ‘If you don’t mind, that is?’
‘You’re more than welcome.’ And I’m surprised to realise that I mean it. I’m surprised to realise that I miss her. Whenever I think of Rafiq now, it’s not as a detective inspector but as the woman who got down on the
