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‘My lawyers can do some things right apparently. What happened?’
I consider not telling him. My mother’s death is the last thing I want to discuss with Matty, given he set her on that road. But then I think there are things I want him to tell me, so maybe I have to give a bit too. Or at least, appear to.
‘Her heart,’ I lie.
He doesn’t need to know everything. Some days even I doubt what I did, the line I crossed.
I don’t tell him that I still talk to her every day, still hear her voice in my head. That I have conversations with her in death that I never got a chance to have with her in life. That I see her in my mind’s eye, as a ghost. A phantom poring over photographs, drinking gin and popping pills. That I would do anything to have her back, to reclaim the woman I lost almost as soon as he came into our lives.
She changed when she met him. He lit her up in ways I never could, destroyed her in ways I never wanted to. I still needed her, but she didn’t need me.
We’re like Bonnie and Clyde, she used to say. It didn’t escape me that Bonnie and Clyde were a pair not a trio.
‘Her heart,’ Matty repeats. ‘Is that so?’ And I realise he knows I’m lying.
I shuffle in my seat, swallow hard, but my throat is arid and the saliva catches, making me cough.
‘Do you want a drink?’ he asks, although there’s no way he can get me one.
Just another game. So many games.
I’m about to remind him that I don’t have long. Perhaps I’ll invent a boyfriend I have to get home to. Or children. But Matty gets there first.
‘I won’t keep you. I’m sure you’re very busy. I just figured it’s time you knew. Before it’s too late.’
A jolt of electricity passes through me. I place my free hand between my knees so he won’t see it tremble.
‘Time I knew what?’
He leans back, ankle resting on his left knee the way my grandfather used to sit.
‘About the skeletons,’ he replies, a smile cruising his lips.
