The Suspect

Book 1: Joseph O'Loughlin

by Michael Robotham

Genres: Mystery; Suspense

Synopsis

Joseph O'Loughlin appears to have the perfect life - a beautiful wife, a loving daughter and a successful career as a clinical psychologist. But nothing can be taken for granted. Even the most flawless existence is only a loose thread away from unravelling. All it takes is a murdered girl, a troubled young patient and the biggest lie of his life. Caught in a complex web of deceit and haunted by images of the slain girl, he embarks upon a search that will take him from London to Liverpool and into the darkest recesses of the human mind...
"A dramatic, well-written debut."--New York Times
"A gripping first novel...taut and fast-moving."--Washington Post
"Lightning-paced."--Entertainment Weekly
"Terrific....a classic 'wrong man' thriller that puts its hero in hot water, then raises the Fahrenheit to a fever pitch....Robotham not only builds the suspense masterfully but tops it off with a stunning twist." People
"One of those rare literary gems: a beautifully written thriller that is both moving and relentlessly suspenseful."--Tess Gerritsen
“A white-knuckle ride and a powerful love story that kept me up half the night.” ANDY McNAB
“The best of the best... truly accomplished .” SUNDAY TELEGRAPH
“Robotham is an absolute master .” STEPHEN KING

Release date: April 15, 2014

Publisher: Mulholland Books

Print pages: 380

Sample

1

From the pitched slate roof of the Royal Marsden Hospital, if you look between the chimney pots and TV aerials, you see more chimney pots and TV aerials. It’s like that scene from Mary Poppins where all the chimneysweeps dance across the rooftops twirling their brooms.


From up here I can just see the dome of the Royal Albert Hall. On a clear day I could probably see all the way to Hampstead Heath, although I doubt if the air in London ever gets that clear.

“This is some view,” I say, glancing to my right at a teenager crouched about ten feet away. His name is Malcolm and he’s seventeen today. Tall and thin, with dark eyes that tremble when he looks at me, he has skin as white as polished paper. He is wearing pajamas and a woolen hat to cover his baldness. Chemotherapy is a cruel hairdresser.

The temperature is 3°C, but the wind chill has chased it below zero. Already my fingers are numb and I can barely feel my toes through my shoes and socks. Malcolm’s feet are bare.

I won’t reach him if he jumps or falls. Even if I stretch out and lean along the gutter, I will still be six feet short of catching him. He realizes that. He’s worked out the angles. According to his oncologist, Malcolm has an exceptional IQ. He plays the violin and speaks five languages—none of which he’ll speak to me.

For the last hour I’ve been asking him questions and telling him stories. I know he can hear me, but my voice is just background noise. He’s concentrating on his own internal dialogue, debating whether he should live or die. I want to join that debate, but first I need an invitation.

The National Health Service has a whole raft of guidelines for dealing with hostage situations and threatened suicides. A critical incident team has been pulled together, including senior members of staff, police and a psychologist—me. The first priority has been to learn everything we can about Malcolm that might help us identify what has driven him to this. Doctors, nurses and patients are being interviewed, along with his friends and family.

The primary negotiator is at the apex of the operational triangle. Everything filters down to me. That’s why I’m out here, freezing my extremities off, while they’re inside drinking coffee, interviewing staff and studying flip charts.

What do I know about Malcolm? He has a primary brain tumor in the right posterior temporal region, dangerously close to his brain stem. The tumor has left him partially paralyzed down his left side and unable to hear from one ear. He is two weeks into a second course of chemotherapy.

He had a visit from his parents this morning. The oncologist had good news. Malcolm’s tumor appeared to be shrinking. An hour later Malcolm wrote a two-word note that said, “I’m sorry.” He left his room and managed to crawl onto the roof through a dormer window on the fourth floor. Someone must have left the window unlocked, or he found a way of opening it.

There you have it—the sum total of my knowledge about a teenager who has a lot more to offer than most kids his age. I don’t know if he has a girlfriend, or a favorite football team, or a celluloid hero. I know more about his disease than I do about him. That’s why I’m struggling.

  

My safety harness is uncomfortable under my sweater. It looks like one of those contraptions that parents strap on to toddlers to stop them running off. In this case it’s supposed to save me if I fall, as long as someone has remembered to fix the other end. It might sound ridiculous, but that’s the sort of detail that sometimes gets forgotten in a crisis. Perhaps I should shuffle back toward the window and ask someone to check. Would that be unprofessional? Yes. Sensible? Again yes.

The rooftop is speckled with pigeon droppings and the slate tiles are covered in lichen and moss. The patterns look like fossilized plants pressed into the stone, but the effect is slick and treacherous.

“This probably makes no difference, Malcolm, but I think I know a little about how you’re feeling,” I say, trying once more to reach him. “I have a disease too. I’m not saying that it’s cancer. It’s not. And trying to make comparisons is like mixing apples with oranges, but we’re still talking about fruit, right?”

The receiver in my right ear begins to crackle. “What in Christ’s name are you doing?” says a voice. “Stop talking about fruit salad and get him inside!”

I take the earpiece out and let it dangle on my shoulder.

“You know how people always say, ‘It’ll be fine. Everything is going to be OK’? They say that because they can’t think of anything else. I don’t know what to say either, Malcolm. I don’t even know what questions to ask.

“Most people don’t know how to handle someone else’s disease. Unfortunately, there’s no book of etiquette or list of do’s and don’ts. You either get the watery-eyed, I-can’t-bear-it-I’m-going-to-cry look or forced jokiness and buck-up speeches. The other option is complete denial.”

Malcolm hasn’t responded. He’s staring across the rooftops as if looking out of a tiny window high up in the gray sky. His pajamas are thin and white with blue stitching around the cuffs and collar.

Between my knees I can see three fire engines, two ambulances and half a dozen police cars. One of the fire engines has an extension ladder on a turntable. I haven’t taken much notice of it until now, but I see it slowly turning and begin to slide upwards. Why would they be doing that? At the same moment, Malcolm braces his back against the sloping roof and lifts himself. He squats on the edge, with his toes hanging over the gutter, like a bird perched on a branch.

I can hear someone screaming and then I realize that it’s me. I’m yelling the place down. I’m wildly gesticulating for them to get the ladder away. I look like the suicidal jumper and Malcolm looks totally calm.

I fumble for the earpiece and hear pandemonium inside. The critical incident team is shouting at the chief fire officer, who is shouting at his second-in-command, who is shouting at someone else.

“Don’t do it, Malcolm! Wait!” I sound desperate. “Look at the ladder. It’s going down. See? It’s going down.” Blood is pounding in my ears. He stays perched on the edge, curling and uncurling his toes. In profile I can see his long dark lashes blinking slowly. His heart is beating like a bird’s within his narrow chest.

“You see that fireman down there with the red helmet?” I say, trying to break into his thoughts. “The one with all the brass buttons on his shoulders. What do you think my chances are of gobbing on his helmet from here?”

For the briefest of moments, Malcolm glances down. It’s the first time he’s acknowledged anything I’ve said or done. The door has opened a chink.

“Some people like to spit watermelon seeds or cherry pips. In Africa they spit dung, which is pretty gross. I read somewhere that the world record for spitting Kudu dung is about thirty feet. I think Kudu is a kind of antelope but don’t quote me on that. I prefer good old-fashioned saliva and it’s not about distance; it’s about accuracy.”

He’s looking at me now. With a snap of my head I send a foaming white ball arcing downwards. It gets picked up by the breeze and drifts to the right, hitting the windscreen of a police car. In silence I contemplate the shot, trying to work out where I went wrong.

“You didn’t allow for the wind,” Malcolm says.

I nod sagely, barely acknowledging him, but inside I have a warm glow in a part of me that isn’t yet frozen. “You’re right. These buildings create a bit of a wind tunnel.”

“You’re making excuses.”

“I haven’t seen you try.”

He looks down, considering this. He’s hugging his knees as if trying to stay warm. It’s a good sign.

A moment later a globule of spit curves outwards and falls. Together we watch it descend, almost willing it to stay on course. It hits a TV reporter squarely between the eyes and Malcolm and I groan in harmony.

My next shot lands harmlessly on the front steps. Malcolm asks if he can change the target. He wants to hit the TV reporter again.

“Shame we don’t have any water bombs,” he says, resting his chin on one knee.

“If you could drop a water bomb on anyone in the world, who would it be?”

“My parents.”

“Why?”

“I don’t want to have chemo again. I’ve had enough.” He doesn’t elaborate. It isn’t necessary. There aren’t many treatments with worse side effects than chemotherapy. The vomiting, nausea, constipation, anemia and overwhelming fatigue can be intolerable.

“What does your oncologist say?”

“He says the tumor is shrinking.”

“That’s good.”

He laughs wryly. “They said that last time. The truth is they’re just chasing cancer all around my body. It doesn’t go away. It just finds somewhere else to hide. They never talk about a cure; they talk about remission. Sometimes they don’t talk to me at all. They just whisper to my parents.” He bites his bottom lip and a carmine mark appears where the blood rushes to the indentation.

“Mum and Dad think I’m scared of dying, but I’m not scared. You should see some of the kids in this place. At least I’ve had a life. Another fifty years would be nice but, like I said, I’m not scared.”

“How many more chemo sessions?”

“Six. Then we wait and see. I don’t mind losing my hair. A lot of footballers shave their hair off. Look at David Beckham; he’s a tosser, but he’s a wicked player. Having no eyebrows is a bit of a blow.”

“I hear Beckham gets his plucked.”

“By Posh?”

“Yeah.”

It almost raises a smile. In the silence I can hear Malcolm’s teeth chattering.

“If the chemo doesn’t work my parents are going to tell the doctors to keep trying. They’ll never let me go.”

“You’re old enough to make your own decisions.”

“Try telling them that.”


“I will if you want me to.”

He shakes his head and I see the tears starting to form. He tries to stop them, but they squeeze out from under his long lashes in fat drops that he wipes away with his forearm.

“Is there someone you can talk to?”

“I like one of the nurses. She’s been really nice to me.”

“Is she your girlfriend?”

He blushes. The paleness of his skin makes it look as though his head is filling with blood.

“Why don’t you come inside and we’ll talk some more? I can’t raise any spit unless I get something to drink.”

He doesn’t answer, but I see his shoulders sag. He’s listening to that internal dialogue again.

“I have a daughter called Charlie who is eight years old,” I say, trying to hold him. “I remember when she was about four, we were in the park and I was pushing her on a swing. She said to me, ‘Daddy, do you know that if you close your eyes really tightly, so you see white stars, when you open them again it’s a brand new world.’ It’s a nice thought, isn’t it?”

“But it’s not true.”

“It can be.”

“Only if you pretend.”

“Why not? What’s stopping you? People think it’s easy to be cynical and pessimistic, but it’s incredibly hard work. It’s much easier to be hopeful.”

“I have an inoperable brain tumor,” he says incredulously.

“Yes, I know.”

I wonder if my words sound as hollow to Malcolm as they do to me. I used to believe all this stuff. A lot can change in ten days.

Malcolm interrupts me. “Are you a doctor?”

“A psychologist.”

“Tell me again why should I come down?”

“Because it’s cold and it’s dangerous and I’ve seen what people look like when they fall from buildings. Come inside. Let’s get warm.”

He glances below at the carnival of ambulances, fire engines, police cars and media vans. “I won the spitting contest.”

“Yes, you did.”

“You’ll talk to Mum and Dad?”

“Absolutely.”

He tries to stand, but his legs are cold and stiff. The paralysis down his left side makes his arm next to useless. He needs two arms to get up.

“Just stay there. I’ll get them to send up the ladder.”

“No!” he says urgently. I see the look on his face. He doesn’t want to be brought down in the blaze of TV lights, with reporters asking questions.

“OK. I’ll come to you.” I’m amazed at how brave that sounds. I start to slide sideways in a bum shuffle—too frightened to stand. I haven’t forgotten about the safety harness, but I’m still convinced that nobody has bothered to tie it off.

As I edge along the gutter, my head fills with images of what could go wrong. If this were a Hollywood movie Malcolm will slip at the last moment and I’ll dive and pluck him out of mid-air. Either that or I’ll fall and he’ll rescue me.

On the other hand—because this is real life—we might both perish, or Malcolm could live and I’ll be the plucky rescuer who plunges to his death.

Although he hasn’t moved, I can see a new emotion in Malcolm’s eyes. A few minutes ago he was ready to step off the roof without a moment’s hesitation. Now he wants to live and the void beneath his feet has become an abyss.

The American philosopher William James (a closet phobic) wrote an article in 1884 pondering the nature of fear. He used an example of a person encountering a bear. Does he run because he feels afraid, or does he feel afraid after he has already started running? In other words, does a person have time to think something is frightening, or does the reaction precede the thought?

Ever since then scientists and psychologists have been locked in a kind of chicken-and-egg debate. What comes first—the conscious awareness of fear or the pounding heart and surging adrenalin that motivates us to fight or flee?

I know the answer now, but I’m so frightened I’ve forgotten the question.

I’m only a few feet away from Malcolm. His cheeks are tinged with blue and he’s stopped shivering. Pressing my back against the wall, I push one leg beneath me and lever my body upwards until I’m standing.

Malcolm looks at my outstretched hand for a moment and then reaches slowly toward me. I grab him by the wrist and pull him upwards until my arm slips around his thin waist. His skin feels like ice.

The front of the safety harness unclasps and I can lengthen the straps. I pass them around his waist and back through the buckle, until the two of us are tethered together. His woolen hat feels rough against my cheek.

“What do you want me to do?” he asks in a croaky voice.

“You can pray the other end of this is tied on to something.”

2

I was probably safer on the roof of the Marsden than at home with Julianne. I can’t remember exactly what she called me, but I seem to recall her using words like irresponsible, negligent, careless, immature and unfit to be a parent. This was after she hit me with a copy of Marie Claire and made me promise never to do anything so stupid again.


Charlie, on the other hand, won’t leave me alone. She keeps bouncing on the bed in her pajamas, asking me questions about how high up it was, whether I was scared and did the firemen have a big net ready to catch me?

“At last I have something exciting to tell for news,” she says, punching me on the arm. I’m glad Julianne doesn’t hear her.

Each morning when I drag myself out of bed I go through a little ritual. When I lean down to tie my shoes I get a good idea of what sort of a day I’m going to have. If it’s early in the week and I’m rested, I will have just a little trouble getting the fingers of my left hand to cooperate. Buttons will find buttonholes, belts will find belt-loops and I can even tie a Windsor knot. On my bad days, such as this one, it is a different story. The man I see in the mirror will need two hands to shave and will arrive at the breakfast table with bits of toilet paper stuck to his neck and chin. On these mornings Julianne will say to me, “You have a brand new electric shaver in the bathroom.”

“I don’t like electric shavers.”

“Why not?”

“Because I like lather.”

“What is there to like about lather?”

“It’s a lovely sounding word, don’t you think? It’s quite sexy—lather. It’s decadent.”

She’s giggling now, but trying to look annoyed.

“People lather their bodies with soap; they lather their bodies with shower gel. I think we should lather our scones with jam and cream. And we could lather on suntan lotion in the summer… if we ever have one.”

“You are silly, Daddy,” says Charlie, looking up from her cereal.

“Thank you, my turtle dove.”

“A comic genius,” says Julianne as she picks toilet paper from my face.

Sitting down at the table, I put a spoonful of sugar in my coffee and begin to stir. Julianne is watching me. The spoon stalls in my cup. I concentrate and tell my left hand to start moving, but no amount of willpower is going to budge it. Smoothly I switch the spoon to my right hand.

“When are you seeing Jock?” she asks.

“On Friday.” Please don’t ask me anything else.

“Is he going to have the test results?”

“He’ll tell me what we already know.”

“But I thought—”

“He didn’t say!” I hate the sharpness in my voice.

Julianne doesn’t even blink. “I’ve made you mad. I like you better silly.”

“I am silly. Everyone knows that.”

I see right through her. She thinks I’m doing the macho thing of hiding my feelings or trying to be relentlessly positive, while really I’m falling apart. My mother is the same—she’s become a bloody armchair psychologist. Why don’t they leave it to the experts to get it wrong?

Julianne has turned her back. She’s breaking up stale bread to leave outside for the birds. Compassion is her hobby.

Dressed in a gray jogging suit, trainers and a baseball cap over her short-cropped dark hair, she looks twenty-seven, not thirty-seven. Instead of growing old gracefully together, she’s discovered the secret of eternal youth whereas I need two tries to get off the couch. Monday is yoga, Tuesday is Pilates, Thursday and Saturday are circuit training. In between times she runs the house, raises a child, teaches Spanish lessons and still finds time to try to save the world. She even made childbirth look easy, although I would never tell her that unless I developed a death wish.

We have been married for sixteen years and when people ask me why I became a psychologist, I say, “Because of Julianne. I wanted to know what she was really thinking.”

It didn’t work. I still have no idea.

  

Sunday morning is normally my time. I bury myself under the combined weight of four newspapers and drink coffee until my tongue feels furry. After what happened yesterday I’m going to avoid the headlines, although Charlie is insisting we cut them out and make a scrapbook. I guess it’s pretty cool being “cool” for once. Up until yesterday she’s regarded my job as more boring than cricket.


Charlie’s rugged up in jeans, skivvy and a ski jacket because I’ve promised she can come with me today. After gulping down her breakfast, she watches me impatiently—convinced that I’m drinking my coffee too slowly.

When it’s time to load up the car, we carry the cardboard boxes from the garden shed and put them next to my old Metro. Julianne is sitting on the front steps with a cup of coffee resting on her knees. “You’re both mad, you know that?”

“Probably.”

“And you’ll get arrested.”

“And that’s going to be your fault.”

“Why is it my fault?”

“Because you won’t come with us. We need a getaway driver.”

Charlie pipes up. “C’mon, Mum. Dad said you used to.”

“That’s when I was young and foolish and I wasn’t on the committee at your school.”

“Do you realize, Charlie, that on my second date with your mother she was arrested for scaling a flag-pole and taking down the South African flag?”

Julianne scowls. “Don’t tell her that!”

“Did you really get arrested?”

“I was cautioned. It’s not the same thing.”

There are four boxes on the roof racks, two in the boot and two on the back seat. Fine beads of sweat, like polished glass, are decorating Charlie’s top lip. She slips off her ski jacket and tucks it between the seats.

I turn back to Julianne. “Are you sure you won’t come? I know you want to.”

“Who’s going to post bail for us?”

“Your mother will do that.”

Her eyes narrow, but she puts her coffee cup inside the door. “I’m doing this under protest.”

“Duly noted.”

She holds out her hand for the car keys. “And I’m driving.”

She grabs a jacket from the coat rack in the hallway and pulls the door shut. Charlie squeezes herself between the boxes on the back seat and leans forward excitedly. “Tell me the story again,” she says as we swing into light traffic along Prince Albert Road, alongside Regent’s Park. “And don’t leave anything out just because Mum’s here.”

  

I can’t tell her the whole story. I’m not even sure of all the details myself. At the heart of it is my great aunt Gracie—the real reason I became a psychologist. She was my maternal grandmother’s youngest sister and she died at the age of eighty, having not set foot outside her house in nearly sixty years.


She lived about a mile from where I grew up in West London, in a grand old detached Victorian house with mini-turrets on the roof, metal balconies and a coal cellar underneath. The front door had two rectangular panes of leadlight. I would press my nose against them and see a dozen fractured images of Aunt Gracie bustling down the hallway to answer my knock. She would open the door just wide enough to let me slip inside and then close it again quickly.

Tall and almost skeletal, with clear blue eyes and fair hair gone streaky white, she always wore a long black velvet dress, with a string of pearls that seemed to glow against the black material.

“Finnegan, come! COME! Joseph’s here!”

Finnegan was a Jack Russell without a bark. His voice box had been crushed in a fight with a neighborhood Alsatian. Instead of barking, he huffed and puffed as though auditioning to play the big bad wolf in a pantomime.

Gracie talked to Finnegan as though he were a person. She read him stories from the local paper, or asked him questions about local issues. She would nod her agreement whenever he responded with a huff, or a puff, or a fart. Finnegan even had his own chair at the table and Gracie would slip him morsels of cake and admonish herself in the same breath for “feeding an animal from the hand.”

When Gracie poured the tea she half filled my cup with milk because I was too young to have full-strength brew. My feet could barely touch the floor when I sat on the dining chairs. If I sat back, my legs stuck straight out underneath the white lace tablecloth.

Years later, when my feet could reach the floor and I had to bend down to kiss Gracie on the cheek, she continued to add half a cup of milk to my tea. Maybe she didn’t want me to grow up.

If I’d come straight from school, she made me sit next to her on the chaise longue, clutching my hand in her own. She wanted to know everything about my day. What I learned in class. What games I played. What fillings I had in my sandwiches. She soaked up the details as though picturing every footstep.

Gracie was a classic agoraphobic—terrified of open space. She once tried to explain it to me, having grown sick of fobbing off my questions.

“Have you ever been afraid of the dark?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“What did you fear would happen if the lights went out?”

“That a monster would get me.”

“Did you ever see this monster?”

“No. Mum says that monsters don’t exist.”

“She’s right. They don’t. So where did your monster come from?”

“Up here.” I tapped my head.

“Exactly. I have a monster too. I know he’s not supposed to exist, but he won’t go away.”

“What does your monster look like?”

“He is ten feet tall and he carries a sword. If I try to leave the house he’s going to cut my head off.”

“Are you making that up?”

She laughed and tried to tickle me, but I pushed her hands away. I wanted an honest answer.

Tiring of this conversation, she screwed shut her eyes and tucked loose strands of white hair into her tightly wrapped bun. “Have you ever watched one of those horror films where the hero is trying to get away and the car won’t start? He keeps turning the key and pumping the accelerator, but the engine just coughs and dies. And you can see the villain coming. He’s got a gun or a knife. And you keep saying to yourself, ‘Get out of there! Get out! He’s coming!’”

I nod, wide-eyed. “Well, you take that fear,” she said, “and you multiply it by a hundred and then you’ll know how I feel when I think about going outside.”

She stood and walked out of the room. The discussion had ended. I never raised the subject again. I didn’t want to make her sad.

I don’t know how she lived. Checks would arrive periodically from a law firm, but Gracie would place them on the mantelpiece, where she could stare at them each day until they expired. I guess they were part of her inheritance, but she wanted nothing to do with her family’s money. I didn’t know the reason… not then.

She worked as a seamstress—making wedding gowns and bridesmaid’s dresses. I would often find the front room draped in silk and organza, with a bride-to-be standing on a stool and Gracie with her mouth full of pins. It was not a place for young boys—not unless they fancied modeling a dress.

The rooms upstairs were full of what Gracie called her “collectibles.” By this she meant books, fashion magazines, reels of cloth, cotton bobbins, hatboxes, bags of wool, photograph albums, soft toys and a treasure trove of unexplored boxes and trunks.

Most of these “collectibles” had been recycled or purchased by mail order. The catalogues were always open on the coffee table and each day the mailman brought something new.

Not surprisingly, Gracie’s view of the world was rather limited. The TV news and current affairs programs seemed to magnify conflict and pain. She saw people fighting, wilderness vanishing, bombs falling and countries starving. While these weren’t the reasons she ran away from the world, they were certainly no incentive to go back.

“It scares me just seeing how small you are,” she told me. “It’s not a good time to be a child.” She glanced out the bay window and shuddered as though able to see a terrible fate awaiting me. I only saw an overgrown and unkempt garden with white butterflies flitting between the gnarled branches of the apple trees.

“Don’t you ever want to go outside?” I asked her. “Don’t you want to look up at the stars or walk along a riverbank or admire the gardens?”

“I stopped thinking about it a long while ago.”

“What do you miss most?”

“Nothing.”

“There must be something.”

She thought for a moment. “I used to love the autumn, just as the leaves turn and begin to fall. We used to go to Kew Gardens and I’d run along the thoroughfares, kicking up the leaves and trying to catch them. The curled leaves would slip from side to side, like miniature boats riding the air until they settled into my hands.”

“I could blindfold you,” I suggested.

“No.”

“What if you put a box over your head? You could pretend you were inside.”

“I don’t think so.”

“I could wait until you were asleep and push your bed outside?”

“Down the stairs?”

“Mmmm. Bit tricky.”

She put her arm around my shoulders. “Don’t you worry about me. I’m quite happy here.”

From then on we had a sort of running joke. I kept suggesting new ways to get her outside and new pastimes like hang-gliding and wing-walking. Gracie would react in mock horror and tell me I was the real lunatic.

  

“So what about her birthday?” says Charlie impatiently. We’re driving through St. John’s Wood, just passing Lord’s cricket ground. The traffic lights gleam brightly against the dullness of the outer walls.

“I thought you wanted the whole story?”

“Yes, but I’m not getting any younger.”

Julianne gets a fit of the giggles. “She gets the sarcasm from you, you know.”

“OK,” I sigh. “I’ll tell you about Gracie’s birthday. She never admitted her age, but I knew she was going to be seventy-five because I found some dates by looking through her photo albums.”

“You said she was beautiful,” says Charlie.

“Yes. It’s not easy to tell from old photographs because nobody ever smiled and the women looked plain scary. But Gracie was different. She had twinkling eyes and always looked as though she was about to giggle. And she used to cinch her belt a little tighter and stand so the light shone through her petticoats.”

“She was a flirt,” says Julianne.

“What’s a flirt?” asks Charlie.

“Never mind.”

Charlie frowns and hugs her knees, resting her chin on the patched knees of her jeans.

“It was pretty difficult to plan a surprise for Gracie because, of course, she never left the house,” I explain. “I had to do everything when she was asleep—”

“How old were you?”

“Sixteen. I was still at Charterhouse.”

Charlie nods and begins pinning her hair up high on her head. She looks exactly like Julianne when she does that.

“Gracie didn’t use her garage. She had no need of a car. It had big wooden doors that opened outwards, as well as an inter