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‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
He actually looks surprised.
‘You never suspected?’
I don’t answer, just narrow my eyes at him. He’s holding all the cards though.
‘Poor sop was only too happy to put a ring on her finger when she told him her expanding waistline was down to him. That was the one thing I could never give her, and the one thing she could never understand about me. To your mother, marriage meant freedom. To me it was a deathtrap.’
I push my chair back, start to stand.
‘I’ve listened to enough of this crap.’
Matty cricks his neck, pushes his sleeves up.
‘Didn’t you ever wonder why Jamey boy left you, Sophie? It was a pretty big deal in those days, a nice Christian boy walking out on his wife and kid.’
I lower myself back down, tell him my parents weren’t suited. Can’t help adding, ‘And clearly he was a chump.’
‘A chump who was terrified by the woman he married. She burned the notebooks after he’d left, but not before he’d read them. Your grandmother did too, I’m told. God, how they freaked her out. I mean it wasn’t the first time she’d had reason to question the purity of her daughter’s soul.’
I snort derisively.
‘You’re many things, but I never pegged you for quite such a storyteller, Matty.’
He brushes a bit of lint off his sweater, flicks his nails.
‘Why do you think she had the pair of you living under your granny’s roof?’
I haven’t thought about my grandparents for years. They passed away shortly after Matty’s sentencing, dying within a few months of each other. A sign they were soulmates, my mother said, which made little sense to me. I expect it wouldn’t, she replied when I told her as much.
‘Bills,’ I say now. ‘Saving on rent. A kid to bring up on her own. . .’
He shakes his head. Uh-uh.
‘She was keeping an eye on Amelia, making sure she stayed in line. Of course, when the rumours started, she had enough. Told your mother to pack her bags.’ He tuts. ‘It’s a sorry state of affairs when a person’s reputation is more important to them than their granddaughter’s well-being, don’t you think?’
I’m not interested in his take on Nanna G or his societal judgements.
‘What notebooks?’ I ask.
It’s as though the words are coming out of someone else’s mouth. Certainly, they haven’t filtered through my brain first.
He smiles, pleased I’m paying attention, and immediately I hate myself for posing the question.
‘Fantasy fiction mostly. Shades of Frankenstein, the Marquis de Sade. There were sketches too, pretty graphic from what she said to me. And stuck in at the back, a photo of Cindy Bowman cut out of a newspaper, along with a bloodstained swatch from her dress.’
My veins chill.
Cindy Bowman was a three-year-old girl whose body had been discovered by Crystal Lake in Newton when my mother was a child. The medical examiner ruled the death as accidental. Cindy had been playing by the rocks, he explained. She’d slipped and cracked her skull.
It was in the local papers of course, but the story wasn’t of sufficient interest to make the news overseas. The only way Matty would have heard about it was if my mother had told him.
I try to look unimpressed, ask him what he’s getting at.
‘Your mother had urges too. The difference is, unlike me, she didn’t have the guts to go through with them.’
My blood settles, I gave him a look of contempt.
