The worst thing of all is: I have lost the certainty of my family without gaining the truth I was seeking. No one knows where Danny and I came from.I still don’t know who I am.
I wake early and tiptoe down to the kitchen to pull the bolt back before making three coffees and carrying them up to Edwin and Danny. Alex and Kiara can fend for themselves.
Danny is still in bed when the police car arrives a couple of hours later, but the rest of us congregate in the sitting room to hear Martin’s news, none of us wanting to be the first to sit down.
Martin watches Alex as he enters. “I suppose you can vouch for your whereabouts around noon yesterday, Mr. Kaimal?”
“Headingley Golf Club,” Alex says.
Martin’s lips twitch, and his colleague jots something down in her notebook.
I pull the note from my pocket then—the note that Laura dropped—and I hand it to Martin.
“Laura dropped this yesterday. It’s not Edwin’s signature. He didn’t write it.”
Martin studies it and then frowns at me. He waits for his colleague to produce a clear plastic evidence bag and drops the note into it before he says, “And you didn’t give this to me yesterday because...?”
I blink down at the rug and shuffle my feet. “I’m sorry,” I mumble.
Martin murmurs to his colleague, and she leaves the room, taking the note in its bag with her. Then he tells us that Laura is recovering well, but didn’t see who attacked her.
“It appears the attacker used a sizable stone from the parapet wall at the top of the tower,” he tells us. “Some of the stones up there are quite loose. We believe the attacker dropped the stone onto Ms. Silveira from above. It caught the side of her head. Another inch to the center and the result could have been much worse.”
“When can she leave the hospital?” Edwin asks.
“This morning,” Martin says. “They’re discharging her as we speak. She was rather hoping to see some of you again before she goes home, so I wondered whether a couple of you might be happy to go and collect her?”
Edwin and I exchange glances.
“So you don’t think any of us are a risk to her, then?” Edwin asks.
“Our information points elsewhere,” Martin says evenly.
“Seraphine and I will pick her up then,” Edwin says. He doesn’t so much as glance at Alex.
Once Martin and his colleague have left, Kiara and Alex argue over whether to leave immediately or to stay and see Laura.
“She was there when I was born, Dad,” Kiara says. “If Edwin doesn’t mind bringing her here first, I’d really like to meet her.”
Edwin makes no comment to this, but when he and I arrive at the hospital, he puts a hand on my arm before I climb out of the car.
“Wait. I’m not sure about this.”
I frown at him. “She’s expecting us now. We can’t just leave her here.”
“No, I mean I’m not sure about asking her... questions. We could just... I just think we need to be certain we want to hear it before we ask her.”
I think about the lipstick message on my mirror, and the blood trickling down Laura’s face and neck. The dead bird on my doorstep. The anonymous letter in the trash bin.
“Because we might not like the answers?” I shake Edwin’s hand off and rub my temples. “Or because whoever attacked Laura might do the same to us?”
Edwin’s forehead is furrowed. “I don’t know. I’m just—I have a bad feeling about all this.”
“You think we’re in danger?”
He holds his palms up. “I don’t know. It sounds crazy. But maybe I should just take her straight back to London, and you get a taxi home. And I’ll tell her I don’t want to hear anything in the car.”
I watch him. “Or we could both drive her back to London.”
