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  ‘It’s funny,’ I said. ‘I think I saw Per in London last week... blonde guy... big... handsome once...’

  ‘You’d be lucky. He died of organ failure, begging down the Underground, three years ago.’

  She laughed bitterly.

  Then the shock hit her.

  We stared at each other in silence for a long time.

  ‘Your father told me that you were a more powerful medium than he had ever been,’ she said at last. ‘He loved you very much, you know. He loved your mother too, though he always talked about her more like a fond parent than a husband. He kept up to date with the family news via his brother. He was so proud when she became an actress. And he followed everything she did. He wrote about her as if she were a latter-day Ellen Terry, though from what I can see of her career she’s been more of a B-List Barbara Windsor. It broke his heart when she stopped him seeing you.’

  ‘I’m sure she had her reasons.’

  ‘Was he not a good father then?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ I remembered how he would sit with me when the shadows came; talking to me, holding my hand, explaining things and telling me that there was “nothing to fear but fear itself”. It was another of his favourite sayings. I’d never believed that it was strictly true. As far as I could see the world was full of hidden dangers.

  ‘You’ve inherited a great gift from him,’ she said.

  ‘I don’t want it!’ I sounded like a sulky kid.

  ‘Well,’ she snapped. ‘We can’t always have what we want!’

  I felt myself flinch and saw the sadness flash across her eyes. ‘There I go again,’ she said. ‘That sharp tongue of mine. It’s so ingrained now. I never used to be this way.’

  ‘It’s okay. I asked for it.’

  ‘And I didn’t mean to be rude about your mother.’

  ‘No worries. You’re only saying what a lot of people think.’

  ‘Turner has always been out of control,’ she said. ‘Even as a child she was always getting into trouble, reckless, and utterly indifferent to anyone’s opinion of her. It’s a fatal combination with the mood swings. She’s inherited her mother’s condition, you see. It’s not as extreme as Sylvia’s and she does, generally, stick to her medication. But it’s not easy for her. And it’s certainly not easy for the people who love her. Do you think you’re up to handling something like that?’

  I wondered. I wasn’t sure. Then I found myself thinking about Corinne and her moods – that wildness she had – and the dark times. I wondered, with a slight flash of resentment, if Luke had actually joined the dots years ago and just chosen not to tell me. He probably hadn’t. It’s amazing how much can be covered over within the privacy of a relationship.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I think so.’

  ‘Good! Because I think she loves you.’

  My heart leapt. ‘No...’ I protested, not daring to hope for that.

  ‘I think she does. She’s hard to read - doesn’t show her emotions. It’s partly the medication - but it’s mainly because of growing up with me. Give her the benefit of the doubt. And if you can persuade her, she needs to leave this house and all its awful memories behind. We have a villa in France. She’d be happier there. She always was. She should sell this place. When I’m gone, she needn’t feel tied to it anymore.’

  I wondered – stupidly – where she was going.

  ‘She won’t want to stay anyway,’ she added. ‘Not after tonight.’

  I thought afterwards that that was the moment when I should have known. But I was still too wrapped up in my own concerns – seeking a get-out clause for my own guilty conscience.

  ‘There was a phone call to my friend Mary on the night she died,’ I said. ‘I think Turner may have mentioned it to you earlier. Do you know anything that could help me to make sense of it?’

  I saw her whole body stiffen. Her face grew taut. Briefly, her left hand flew up to her heart and stayed there a moment, as if she were soothing it. Then she appeared to take a deep breath and reached down to open a drawer to her left on the workbench. It was obviously old and made of solid wood. I heard it judder as she pulled at it.

  ‘I sometimes despair of my daughter,’ she said. ‘But I have always loved her. I’ve loved her beyond everything. And I would do anything to protect her.’

  She took something out of the drawer and laid it on the bench in front of her.

  It was a gun.

  ‘This belonged to my husband’s father,’ she said, flatly. ‘During the “Great” War, he used it single-handedly to defend a wounded comrade against the enemy. He was awarded a medal for his bravery. Stephen was so proud of him. I never met the man, but from everything I heard about him, I can tell you that he was a violent, arrogant bully who systematically ground the spirit out of his son.’

  She picked it up and turned it in her hands, as if she were feeling the full weight of its heroic past.

  ‘I think it reassured Stephen to keep it,’ she said. ‘His fall-back for the day when it was all finally too much.... Of course, he couldn’t do it and the cancer killed him in the end.’

  Now she’d made her confession, it occurred to me, finally, that she must be planning on killing herself. I glanced at the sheet of paper on the workbench. A suicide note of course. How could I have been so blind?

  ‘I’m so... so sorry about your friend,’ she said, her voice shaking. ‘It’s just so tragic. It should never have turned out that way. We tried to stop her.’

  Who were the “they”? And who did they try to stop? Mary - or Turner? Somehow, in that moment, I couldn’t bring myself to ask. I stared at the gun and willed her to put it down. I wondered if I should try to keep her talking like they always did in TV dramas. Or maybe I should run and shout for Turner? I had no idea what to do for the best. So I played for time.

  ‘What happened?’ I asked. ‘Do you know?’

  ‘No. It was an accident. She can’t have been looking where she was going. She was just in a blind panic... like an animal that’s been spooked. That panic when they just run and run. But I didn’t know... truly. We never could have imagined it could have turned out that way. No-one could have predicted it.’

  ‘Did you actually see it?’

  Or was this just Turner’s version of events?

  ‘I didn’t see it, I promise you. I didn’t know. I wouldn’t have just left her if I’d known.’

  She was turning the gun over and over in her hands.

  ‘Apparently there’s just one bullet,’ she said. ‘My husband was a perfect marksman. It was in his blood, I guess. He used to love all that stuff. Fishing, hunting, shooting... Chasing across muddy fields on horses on Boxing Day in antiquated outfits when anyone in their right mind is tucked up indoors in front of a roaring fire with a good book and a plateful of those godawful mince pies you Brits are so fond of. I’m a New Yorker, born and raised. I never got any of that enthusiasm for blood sports. Turner never did either. It was one of the few things we had in common.’

  ‘Well,’ I said gently, remembering the magnificent paintings in Turner’s London flat. ‘That and your love of art.’

  She smiled. ‘Yes. There is that... though she never could tell one end of a paintbrush from another.’

  She looked down at the gun. ‘Just one bullet,’ she said quietly. ‘That’s risky. What if your hand shakes at the last minute? What if you don’t quite hit the target? That could be dreadful, I think’

  She stood up, and I saw that her eyes were glazed.

  For the first time, I wondered if she had been drinking, though she wasn’t obviously drunk. I tried to remember if I’d seen a glass on the mantelpiece when I’d walked in on her earlier.

  ‘Don’t forget,’ she said. ‘If Turner actually sticks around with you, make sure you get her away from this place.’

  She was holding the gun shakily, her right hand supporting the left around the grip.

  I told myself it was a museum piece - probably too old to fire.


  I was wrong.

  Until that moment, ‘ear splitting’ was just a phrase to me. Then there was this almighty judder as the room quaked and an entire pane of the floor to ceiling glass exploded and thundered out of its frame like Niagara Falls in full spate; lethal shards ricocheting in all directions, stinging and slashing at my face and the back of my hands as they flew up instinctively to protect my eyes.

  Then silence more profound than anything I had ever heard before.

  And, as I lowered my lacerated hands at last and tried to focus through the pain, I saw Joyce Waters walking in slow motion towards the massive, jagged hole she had created.

  The night air was sucking the warmth out of the room as I realised what she intended. I felt the hairs on my arms prickling up in coldness and fear. I saw, rather than heard her yelp as her foot crunched down onto the glass. She recoiled, her whole body going into shock for an instant, her fists clenching and unclenching at her sides as she struggled to collect herself. She looked down at the small, inky pool spreading around her heel. Then I saw her bite down on her lip, summoning all her remaining strength to finish what she had started.

  I don’t know why I tried to intervene, leaping towards her in a pathetic attempt at a rugby tackle. It was just some stupid instinct, automatic and unthinking, like when I caught Turner that first night at Ros’s party.

  She lashed out with the back of her left hand when she saw me coming, catching me across my face with the barrel of the gun she was still holding, hitting me, I think, much harder than she intended. I felt my nose crack and fill as I staggered backwards, clutching my face, already slippery with blood, queasy and off balance, feeling my eyes stinging with tears. I saw her hesitate, her face registering horror at what she’d just done. Then I saw her other hand flash out towards me and I jumped away from her, lost my footing on the glass, and staggered backwards towards the gaping hole in the window, reaching out for her with my flailing arms, struggling for anything at all to catch hold of and unwittingly adding her weight to the momentum of my fall. When finally, I came to rest, impaled and terrified on the jagged teeth of broken glass sticking up along the window sill, she was on top of me and I was holding her in my arms, clinging to her, unable, in my panic to know how to ever go about letting her go.

  I thought I was going to be sick. Pain seared deep inside my body as I felt her trying to gently ease her weight off me. I saw tears in her eyes and felt blood pulsing hot and then cooling as it ran down my face and neck, and into my ears, and something hot and wet soaking into the thick cotton of Turner’s black sweatshirt along my back.

  Then my mind was in freefall and I was back in the Student Union the day I met Corinne. An old Blondie song was playing on the juke box. We used to joke that it was ‘our song’. We bought the album. But I couldn’t recall the words anymore. There was something about the bells in my head or my ears or something like that. The words kept slipping away from me, but I could half hear the tune and I could see Corinne’s face as clearly as if she were with me right there, laughing and pushing her hair out of her eyes in that cute way she had and smiling at me like I was the only person in the world who would ever mean anything to her ever again.

  ‘Gill, hold on... don’t move... I’m going to get help.’ I saw the words in the movement of her lips. A face that wasn’t Corinne’s wafting in and out of my consciousness as if it were being buffeted by high winds and I felt cold where the touch of her skin was no longer on mine, and I knew that bit by bit, Joyce Waters was peeling herself away from me.

  For a crazy second, it occurred to me that I might have saved her. I looked up through eyes that wouldn’t open properly through a film of red to mouth the words ‘Thank you.’

  I could see her shimmering in the moonlight, standing over me.

  I think she smiled.

  Then, her expression twisted and fell as the shadow fell over us.

  There was a scream, I think.

  And she was gone.

  I thought at first that the arms lifting me were my father’s, home at last, picking me up to swing me into the air while I giggled like I used to when I still thought he was the most wonderful human being in the whole wide world.

  Then I realised that it was Turner, sobbing as she eased me gently off the glass, wrapping strips of clean painting rag round my body to hold in the blood, telling me that everything was going to be alright while her face told me a totally different story.

  She swam in and out of focus as I squinted at her in the bubbling red and blue light, wanting desperately to believe her.

  And an image keeps returning to me.... of the now familiar darkness, playing over and around her... then absorbing itself into her, as if the two of them had finally given up the struggle to remain separate and had reverted to their original state of oneness right there, right before my eyes.

  Surgery

  I’m told I almost died on the operating table, my life hanging in the balance as a whole army of medical professionals fought against my body’s urge to just give up.

  They were very proud to have beaten the odds and brought me back to life – and when I finally got out of intensive care I heard lots of horror stories about how I almost didn’t make it... ‘A millimetre nearer... a few minutes longer... If your friend hadn’t acted so quickly...’

  It was actually quite a shocking thing for me to realise that I was glad to be alive.

  The First Interview

  As soon as they could, the police wanted to see me.

  They explained to me that they were investigating the death of Joyce Waters and I was being interviewed as a witness.

  ‘Please could you tell me what happened - in your own words?’

  The police woman had short, mousey hair and a sympathetic smile and she asked the question oh-so gently, her hand resting on my bedside locker, which was bright and quite gratifyingly crowded with cards and flowers from well-wishers. The card from Michelle and David and the kids tilted ominously as she nudged it accidentally with her finger. A frighteningly young male colleague stood awkwardly, bored, just a few steps behind.

  I thought about the question. I’d been trying to work that one out for myself, and the truth was that I didn’t know.

  ‘I think she must have slipped, or... or overbalanced maybe,’ I speculated, trying to keep my eyes focused on her face. The pain medication didn’t help with that, I must say. Her soft brown eyes kept blurring a little as I looked at her.

  ‘Okay, could you just tell me what happened – starting from the beginning?’

  I sketched in the details from when I first met Turner’s mother in the drawing room, missing out a lot of stuff that didn’t seem to me to be directly relevant.

  ‘I thought she’d changed her mind...’ I said, finally. ‘But maybe I was wrong....’

  ‘You’re not sure whether she did it on purpose or not?’

  ‘She?.... Who?... When?’ Somewhere, vaguely I remembered wondering something like that before.

  The policewoman’s eyebrows raised a little. She clearly thought I was delirious. She jotted something in her notebook. ‘The deceased.’ she said. ‘Joyce Waters... That is who we’re talking about, isn’t it?’

  ‘Oh... yes... yes, of course...’ Not Turner then. That was okay. I could feel waves of exhaustion washing over me. It was growing harder and harder to keep my eyes open. I closed them. It felt good.

  Then I remembered the sheet of paper on the workbench. Strangely, I realised that I’d missed that bit out. ‘She was writing something.’ I said. ‘It was on the workbench... I think it may have been a suicide note... What did it say?’

  ‘I’m afraid I’m not at liberty to comment on that.’ She sounded a bit affronted, like I’d asked her to take all her clothes off and get into bed with me.

  ‘At what stage did you first notice that Mrs Shaw was in the room?’ she asked, belatedly, I think joining the dots in her own way on my earlier ramblings.

  ‘I...’ I could feel my own eyes movin
g painfully from side to side as I tried to at least picture the answer truthfully for myself. I had the mother of all headaches and I wanted to go back to sleep now. ‘Well, it was after Corinne... and my dad...’ the words were slipping away from me, slurring...

  The police woman stepped closer to me, wanting to catch anything I might say, right there, while the balance of my mind was disturbed.

  Then I was rescued by a nurse bustling into the room. ‘I’m sorry, I’m going to have to ask you to leave,’ I heard her say. ‘She’s clearly not up to this. I told you it might be too soon.’

  By the time the police came back, I’d got my story straight. Joyce Waters had jumped out of the window, just as she had intended to do before I’d been stupid enough to try to stop her. The younger police officer yawned and nodded as if he were keen to get away to some more interesting case, but his colleague gave me a hooded look that told me she didn’t quite buy it.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘That will be all – for the moment.’

  The Ring

  My mother’s visit created quite a stir.

  Apparently she’d kept up a tragic bedside vigil while I was unconscious but then a production of ‘The Importance of Being Ernest’ had come up and she’d convinced herself that I would want her to sacrifice her finest maternal feelings for her art.

  Anyway, now I was conscious and she was back, all flushed and exhilarated from running the gauntlet of local reporters who had scented a potentially juicy story and were camped out in the car park outside. I only had to hear her voice echoing from the far end of the ward and I was instantly in flashback to my schooldays – the kaftans, the dramatic entrances, the sheer, grinding, gut wrenching embarrassment of wanting to fit in and having a mother like that.