Chapter Forty-Six

It was a fortnight since Chrysanthi had got out of hospital after the operation on her arm.

Cassie had been back to visit her four or five times during her hospital stay. Haunted by the prospect of one day opening a body bag to find that familiar face with its winged eyebrows, she felt driven to stop Chrysanthi giving up on life again. And crazy as it might sound, she had an unspoken deal with Bronte that if she looked after her mother they'd be quits.

Absolution.

So she'd made herself a nuisance with hospital staff, sorting out Chrysanthi's post-release occupational therapy to get her damaged arm working properly, as well as gently encouraging her to think of ways that might give her life meaning again.

Now the two of them sat in Chrysanthi's living room in Hampstead, drinking tea and eating oven-warm kolaczki – biscuits made with rich cream cheese pastry and filled with home-made cherry preserve. Babcia had made a batch for Easter, which had fallen the previous weekend, and had given Cassie a tin of them to take to Chrysanthi's.

Cassie sought her eye, pleased to see some colour back in her cheeks at last.

‘So have you thought any more about the future, what you might do now?' she asked gently.

Chrysanthi tipped her head. ‘I'm going for a visit with my relatives. In Australia' – pronouncing it in the Greek way ‘ Af -stralia'.

‘Wow! This was the cousin you mentioned?'

‘Second cousin – on my mother's side.' They exchanged a look. ‘I had never been in contact before but I found her on Facebook and now she sends me pictures and messages every day. Her teenage children call me their Kamden theitsa – Camden auntie.'

‘How exciting!'

A cautious smile lifted one side of her face, as if smiling was a trick she had yet to master. She still wore the black of mourning but today it was brightened by a coral-coloured scarf round her neck – the first time Cassie had seen her wear any proper colour. It offset her complexion, making her look more her real age – forty-four. Barely halfway through life .

‘I'd like to ask you a favour,' said Chrysanthi. ‘Will you look after my Sophia's grave at St Ioannis while I am away?'

‘I'd be honoured.' It struck Cassie that the old patriarch Father Michaelides would be furious at the sight of her on his patch tending Bronte's grave, but that was just an added bonus.

Chrysanthi's eyes scanned Cassie's face. ‘I see a lot of her in you, you know. Not in the face but in the spirit. You're both such brave girls.'

Cassie could hardly contradict her, to say that she wished she really had been brave when it mattered, back when they were fourteen: brave enough to befriend her daughter so they could have faced down the bullies together. But time didn't run backwards.

Chrysanthi went on, ‘They're not religious, my cousins. But .?.?.' Meeting Cassie's eye, she made a face that married regret and resignation. That part of her life was over now . She might find a liberal priest who would absolve her of the ‘sin' of her incestuous marriage but now there was the other little matter of a dead husband and father .

Thou shalt not kill , was the biggie, after all.

Chrysanthi met her eye. ‘I miss the church,' she said simply. ‘And most of all I miss the sacrament of confession.'

Picturing Father Michaelides' implacable profile through the grille of the confessional, Cassie failed to see any comfort there. But then religion hadn't been the lifeline it had been to Chrysanthi all these years. ‘I can see that it must be cathartic to have someone you can say anything to,' she said.

Catharsis , from the ancient Greek for cleansing or purification.

Seeing Chrysanthi's gaze upon her, an uncertain look in her eyes, Cassie realised something. She had more to confess . And by a twist of fate it was Cassie who had become her confessor.

Cassie had never asked, and Chrysanthi had never revealed, how she had exacted revenge on George for their daughter's murder. She clearly couldn't have done the deed herself: at the moment George was falling to his death in Stratford she'd been in St Ioannis with Cassie after all, bent on taking her own life.

Meeting the older woman's eye, Cassie said, ‘You know you can tell me anything you want to. In total confidence.'

Chrysanthi started talking, the words spooling out of her gratefully. When it had become clear to her that George had killed their daughter, she said, she'd faced a choice: hope that the police would find enough evidence to ensure he was punished, or take matters into her own hands.

‘The police had failed my darling daughter from the very first day,' she said. ‘How could I trust them to get justice for her? And I had her memory to think of. I couldn't let the whole world drag her name through the mud, for her parents' sins to be visited on her.'

‘Her father 's sin,' said Cassie gently. ‘You mean that so long as George was alive the whole story of Bronte's parentage might still have come out?'

Chrysanthi nodded. After a lifetime protecting her daughter from the truth about her birth, she was driven to protect her memory in death.

‘Once he saw that I had realised his guilt, it would only have been a matter of time before he ran away, disappeared into some hidey-hole overseas. Somewhere that doesn't ask questions of the wealthy.'

‘And you feared that once he lost his nerve and ran, the police would be straight on to him, look into the Cyprus angle, and join the dots.'

Chrysanthi nodded, touching a crucifix at her neck. ‘There were people in our home village, people who had known my mother, who must have heard things. That after he took me from the care home in Larnaca, I had given birth to twins, and that we were living in England as .?.?. man and wife' – her voice dropping to a whisper on the last words.

‘And in all these years nobody alerted the authorities? To report him as an abuser?' Cassie couldn't keep the outrage out of her voice.

Chrysanthi shook her head slowly. ‘Such a shameful thing would only be whispered. They would blame me as much as him. They would say that I should have resisted him.'

Cassie made a sound of angry disbelief.

‘When the detectives asked me about his death, I told them that in his grief over losing Sophia he had spoken repeatedly about destroying himself. They believed me.'

Cassie's curiosity got the better of her. ‘But how .?.?.?'

Chrysanthi sighed. ‘There's only one person in the world I could ask to deal with something like that. We grew up together in the children's home and he came to London not long after I did. He's like a brother to me. He didn't know the whole story – what George did to me and my daughter. When I told him he just said, "I'll take care of it."'

Wow . Cassie wouldn't mind having a mate like that.

Chrysanthi went to refresh the teapot, giving Cassie time to examine what she felt about her confession.

Vigilantism . A nasty word for a sordid business, and not something she'd ever imagined herself approving of. The pathologist had clearly found no signs of George having fought his attacker. Maybe he'd had a gun to his head. Perhaps had even welcomed his punishment.

Either way, she found she gave zero fucks about George's fate. Sure, he had loved his daughter, but when faced with the risk of exposure, he had put himself first and coldly planned her death. Even at the very last moment when she was clinging on for her life, no doubt begging him to save her, he could have relented and pulled her up.

Picturing her own dad's lopsided smile, she experienced an unexpected rush of love for him so powerful that it snatched the breath from her throat.

*

That evening Cassie did something she'd been putting off, something that had been weighing on her mind. She was dreading it, but she detested unfinished business.

She walked straight past the queue of youngsters outside the club, their excitement hovering above them like a physical, palpable thing. Looking at the faces, she could see that several of the girls were under eighteen, no doubt using fake ID to get in. Reaching the head of the queue, she looked up at the display that read ‘SkAR: New Spring Residency!' before scoping the bouncers for a familiar face. Nothing. But just then she saw him emerging from the foyer, the black guy who had checked on her that night. When he saw her he looked alarmed, and then resigned, like he'd been anticipating her return.

Pulling out a pack of cigs, he nodded to the alleyway just beyond the club. After they both lit up, he said, ‘I know why you're here.'