‘Patrick told me everything,’ she said to Charles. ‘Everything that’s happened since Lewis and I went to the caves. You were planning to make him take the blame for all of it. And you thought Holly here would back you up, right?’
Holly and I exchanged a look, which Jasmine saw.
‘I guess you were wrong about that. Guess I was, too.’
‘She’s a traitor,’ Charles said.
‘Fuck you, Dad. You want me to keep lying for you? I’m not going to do it any more. I kept your secret about being Avril’s dad. And I know that wasn’t the first time you cheated, either.’
‘Nonsense.’
‘That’s crap, and you know it. I heard you on the phone, talking to some woman, the first time Mum was sick. Whispering… gross things. There were other times when you’d get home late, smelling of booze and perfume. You weren’t as discreet as you thought you were.’ There were tears in her eyes. ‘Mum knew what you were up to.’
Charles was shaking his head, trying to deny it. But it was too late now. All the masks he wore had been ripped off. The monster had been fully revealed.
‘She tried to defend you,’ Holly said. ‘I went to her, told her what I knew. She told me that nothing could be allowed to destroy our family. I remember exactly what she said to me. She said, “Families are held together by secrets and lies and little pacts. All the things we don’t say. All the things we don’t show the rest of the world.”’
‘Fuck me,’ said Brenda. ‘My family is held together by love. What’s left of it.’
Holly had picked up a cardboard beer mat from the table and was tearing it to pieces, hardly even aware of what she was doing.
‘She said that a family is like a spider’s web. Almost impossibly intricate and strong. A kind of miracle. But all it takes is for one part of the web to be torn and the whole thing falls apart.’
The metaphor made me shudder. I could almost picture the Grants as a family of spiders, squatting at the edges of this web they’d spun together. And what did it make me? A fly, trapped in the web, wriggling. Their latest victim.
Holly continued. ‘For years, I went along with what she said. Yeah, I ran away. I got so wasted and wild I didn’t know who I was half the time. But even then, I never spilled any of our secrets, even though all this time I knew it was probably you who killed Jimmy.’
Brenda dropped the glass she was holding. It banged on the table, somehow not breaking.
‘It’s not true,’ Charles said.
‘Stop it, Dad,’ Holly said. She sounded like she was going to cry. ‘Please, just stop lying.’ She turned to Brenda. ‘Jimmy saw him and Morag. I’m guessing he threatened to tell everyone.’
Now Brenda was crying. ‘I knew it. I knew it.’
Holly went on. ‘I stayed loyal all these years. But it has to stop. Murdering Samir, killing Morag… it’s too much.’
Charles said nothing. He was getting older before my eyes, turning greyer, frailer, as if all the years he’d held at bay were rushing back. Or like a pact he’d made with some devil had been broken. The picture in the family attic, destroyed.
In a weak voice, Charles spoke to Jasmine. ‘You said you know everything. Does that mean you also know how I found you?’
Jasmine had finished her Coke. Unlike everyone else here, she still seemed very calm. Almost like she was enjoying this. She set the empty glass down on the table. ‘You mean, the app?’
‘Who told you? Lewis? I thought he would keep quiet. He knew if he said anything he would be completely cut off. That he’d never get anything from me.’
‘Yes, Lewis told me,’ Jasmine replied. ‘But not in the caves.’
‘He told you before you went there?’
Jasmine leaned forward. ‘Charles, I knew about the app before I even met you.’
47
Jasmine enjoyed telling the story. She asked Brenda to fetch her another Coke, then sat back in her wooden chair and told us everything that had happened.
‘It was back in February. Actually, I think it might have been Valentine’s Day, which I hated. You know how many horny couples I’d have to check in to the hotel? Red fucking roses everywhere. It reminded me of how lonely I was, how every guy I dated was a deadbeat or an asshole.
‘I was broke, too. So poor I didn’t know how I was going to make next month’s rent. I’d already had to ask for an extension from my landlord, that dick. He kept hinting there were other ways to pay the rent.’ She pulled a disgusted face.
