For the first time since my parents died, I find myself free of questions.
I know that my parents died as the result of some cheap, heinous deal to keep one of Cain Green’s many affairs under wraps.
I know Bancroft and my mother had an affair.
I know who texted the photo of Alex and me and Bancroft’s body.
I know that Brendan was able to recover Laura’s phone and erase all traces of it.
I knoweverything.
So where is the satisfaction? Where’s the sense of victory I’ve chased incessantly for five years?
I’ve filled the answers to all my unknowns like the potholes on these shitty Scottish roads, but it feels like they’re only in worse condition.
I just need to get through today. Tomorrow I’ll tackle things like showering and eating and studying.
I nod at Mrs. Smith who lives on the corner, standing in her dressing gown with a cigarette between her lips. She nods back, setting her cup of tea on top of the green wheelie bin beside her. “You got any dishwasher tablets spare, Winters?”
“Haven’t got a dishwasher, Mary.”
She coughs, a heaving, wet cough that racks her whole body. “You should get one.”
“Probably.”
“Is it true? You went to that posh castle school?”
“Yeah.”
“What’s it like?”
I pause just past her house, in almost as much disrepair as mine. A heavy sigh has my shoulders sinking. “The food’s good.”
“I bet.” She exhales a thick plume of smoke. “If you see Steve, ask him if he has a dishwasher tablet spare.”
I don’t know how I did this for four years, survived off petrol station bread and my own tears. When I round the corner onto the gray pebble dashed terrace that I call home, my feet come to a stop.
I should be pleased to see him, to discover he hadn’t flown back home yet, but there’s something about that car being here. A hundred-thousand-pound car parked between houses that cost thesame. Wheels that probably cost a month’s rent each while Mary is trading the items in her kitchen cupboard for dishwasher tablets.
When I reach the ridiculous Land Rover, it’s empty, but the lights are switched on inside the house, something I didn’t bother to do.
The door is unlocked. I kick my sandals off on the peeling vinyl flooring and drag myself into the kitchen.
Alex turns to face me, the room plummeting into silence. He looks tired. He rakes his eyes down my body, and whatever he sees is enough to fill them with something that looks a lot like sadness.
Great.
“For the sake of my carbon footprint, Ophelia, we are really going to have to work on our communication issues.”
I kneel to place the milk in the fridge, but it looks ridiculous now, surrounded by fresh fruit and yogurt and cheese and ready-made meals that Alex has already put there.
The yellow light from the bulb in the fridge swims from the tears I can’t keep at bay, the guilt that sits on my shoulders too heavy for me to stand.
I brace a hand on the bubbling floor in front of me, curling my other against my heart, because ithurts. If it were anyone else stood behind me, I’d be embarrassed about the mangled sob that tears its way out of my throat.
“You can’t just switch all my lights on,” I cry, like that’s the issue here. “I’m trying to keep my bills down.”
A hand settles on my lower back, rubbing a gentle circle. “Let me help with—”
