Page 70 of Last Night

Finlay’s eyes narrow. He’s way too smart for ‘Can I think about it?’ ploys.

‘OK, look. You helped create this problem. I’m asking you to help fix it, at no financial cost to yourself. That’s not unreasonable? You involved yourself, when I asked you not to. Uninvolving yourself at this point is pretty selfish.’

I make an indignant gasping noise at the word ‘selfish’, even though it is more or less a fair summary.

‘Plus, if you do this …’ Fin says. ‘I’ll let the diaries and letters thing drop.’

‘Really?’

He has me. The appeal of escaping that drama, when I’ve obliterated the items of value, is undeniable.

‘Yes. I’m upset about it but I’m willing to let it go, if you help me.’

I lick dry lips.

‘When do we need to go? For how long?’ I say.

‘Tomorrow. I’ll hire a car, drive us up, book us rooms somewhere central for a few days. Ann, the cleaner, has my number to call me if he appears back here in the meanwhile.’

‘Tomorrow?! I have a job.’

‘You can’t swing time off?’

‘Hmmm. Maybe?’

Actually, our area manager Kirsty has been giving us the three-line whip on one of us booking holidays this month. No one wants crappy November when they could have party-filled December, and we’d been eyeing each other, wondering who’d break first.

And my neighbour Greta is always delighted to feed Roger, in return for a bottle of Prosecco and a box of After Eights.

I chew my lip.

An old-fashioned grandfather clock ticks behind us.

‘I guess I could help. If it’s for a few days.’

‘I’ll pick you up tomorrow. Message me where’s best.’

I walk back to my bus, deep in thought and, possibly, second thoughts.

Why is Finlay Hart, born without a heart, the man who didn’t care about his mother dying and couldn’t bring himself to exchange more than a few terse words with his father and sister at her funeral, exerting himself to find Mr Hart? He lives in New York, he could respectably wash his hands of this, leave instructions for his father’s return. As he says, his dad doesn’t know who he is.

In the minutes it takes for the bus to pull round the corner, I think – if it’s not love, could it be money?

Is it to get the will changed, if he’s been disinherited? Fast-tracking Dad to a home, house straight on the market, and no Susie to object or interfere? Or indeed, claim half. It seems possible.

If that’s the case, am I being an accomplice, by retrieving his dad? Putting a smiling friendly face to the plot? I rationalise: if itisthat, I’m still better placed by his side if I want to prove it and prevent it. If Mr Hart’s happy and safe at home for now, who is Fin to hustle him into care?

Ghost Susie’s voice swims into my head, immediate and unbidden.

You know what they say, Eve. To catch a thief, you have to climb into his rented Mercedes Benz S-Class.

25

The immutable law of my workplace is that you are always in the wrong, somehow. When I ask to be granted the holiday allowance that we were being strong-armed to take, it turns out I’m still a troublemaker.

‘Yeah, it’swunderbaryou’re miraculously complying, Eve, but does it have to be, like,today?’ Kirsty drawled, when I requested it, having emailed the evening before. ‘HasBrad Pittswung by in hisGulfstreamand saidget in loser we’re going shopping?’

Kirsty is a pretend-posh person. She could come from Cairo or Kettering.

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