Chapter 6

6

It is less than a twenty-minute walk across the park to Dr. Reid's riverside home, but it could be a different country. Instead of screeching sirens, there is the shrill, insistent pitch of birdsong. I pause, crane my head. Shutterless windows stare back at me. From the outside Algos House looks the same as the others, nothing out of place, an elegant Regency facade with sash windows, a gravel drive, a gleaming black front door. Now, finally, I'm about to find out how much that's really the case. I had doubts the interview would happen at all until last night when Rhik finally texted.

Nate can do midday for the interview and an early slot for the photographer, around 10am if that suits? His niece Jade will be there to let you in—need any more directions?

No worries. I'll find it.

Of course, I will. Anyone like me familiar with the story knows exactly where Dr. Nate Reid lives, the sort of neighborhood where nothing bad ever happens. Except that, not so long ago, it did.

Two and a half years prior, to be exact. It was a Friday evening and Nate had returned home, according to news reports, and walked into Eva's studio to find her collapsed on the floor. The pathologist gave her cause of death as a hypoxic-ischaemic brain injury—lack of oxygen to the brain—after a drug-induced heart attack. A high level of cocaine was discovered in her bloodstream, which could indicate an overdose, although there was no evidence Eva wanted to take her own life in the days leading up to her death, and no note was left. Still, that was the theory Nate had offered to the investigators.

The type of heart attack that reportedly killed Eva was the deadliest. Known as the widow-maker, it causes a total blockage in the left main coronary artery, meaning the heart stops beating almost instantly. An early indicator in cases like this is often severe chest pain, a crucial sensation that, tragically, Eva would have been unable to feel because of her genetic condition.

In the end, the jury's verdict was open, meaning they were unable to draw any strong conclusion since evidence was lacking. Questions remained with no black-and-white answers, only endless gray. Who inflicted small bruises discovered on her upper arms? Who vandalized her sculptures and why? Who took her cell phone? And where was Eva's glass cutter, the tool she relied on most for her sculptures?

Inevitably, Nate was viewed in a suspicious light even though he denied any wrongdoing. He told the police the last time he saw Eva alive was the morning of the day she died, that he had spent the day at a work conference in Manchester and stayed overnight, only returning the next day. His alibi was watertight—his speech was well-received by a large audience and afterward he went out for drinks with colleagues. There was no sign of forced entry at their home, and only Nate's fingerprints were found at the scene.

While her sister, Kath, battled publicly to reopen the inquest, Nate chose to vanish from view, burying himself in his work at the Rosen, trying to ignore the media's interest in the tawdry details that portrayed his wife as a vulnerable-but-reckless figure. Kath was adamant this wasn't the sister she recognized and loved, the woman who dedicated herself to helping others by training to be a psychotherapist.

With all this scrutiny, it wasn't surprising that Eva's art had increased in value since her death, selling steadily from a small gallery in Whitechapel. She had established her style early on, sculpting female torsos in mottled bronze. What set them apart was their generous forms, wide-hipped, curvy and soft-bellied. These weren't idealized female figures, far from it. At the waist they would taper to a fine edge where she would spike them with an array of razors, knives, nails, crushed glass or barbed wire, depending on the scale. The female body weaponized.

Visceral and urgent, the critics agreed her work was a powerful comment on female anger and self-expression. I followed her art on auction sites and was even tempted to buy one of her smaller pieces, until I saw the prices. Definitely out of my league with my journalist reporter's salary, along with a brother like mine to support.

I check my watch and repeat my name into an intercom. I hear footsteps inside, stand a little straighter and step forward. Showtime.

A young woman answers the door. "Hi. You must be Anna," she says, shaking my hand. "I'm Jade." I notice a tiny blue swallow tattoo on the inside of her wrist. She wears a long box pleat skirt in eau de Nil that shimmers as she walks.

"Come in. Your photographer left around an hour ago, they spent most of the time in the garden," she says, turning, and I follow her down a dark paneled hallway completely at odds with the bright white galleried atrium at the end of it. A balcony runs around its edges with a floor above and, at the top, a ceiling of glazed glass throws off a pale mint light the color of swimming pools. It's a bit like stepping inside a giant glacier mint.

"Nice place," I say, affecting polite indifference. Maybe it's journalistic instinct to avoid too much excessive enthusiasm when it comes to wealth, a fear we have of appearing too sycophantic, or worse, envious.

I'm well-aware of that nasty scratch of longing whenever I visit homes like this, the reflex to find my own lifestyle lacking. It goes with the territory this, nose pressed to the window, an invitation to observe but never belong. Amira started out as a travel writer, one of the reasons that she clicked with Tony early on when I introduced them, but after a while she couldn't hack the press trips. "You're chauffeured to a ski lodge in St. Moritz for a few days, then dumped back at Gatwick, and it's a bus home to your apartment-share. Sometimes it's better not to know how other people live." Soon after, she took a desk job instead.

My show of mild indifference becomes more of a challenge as we walk into the open-plan living room with double-height windows. The floor is gray slate scattered with bright Moroccan rugs in electric pinks and reds. Two low sleek sofas in turquoise velvet face each other. Every blank space is an opportunity for color; bold abstract canvases hang alongside bright decorative collages. No surface is unadorned, all wrestle for space and attention. There are floor-to-ceiling shelves lined with books, arranged by color. It is cluttered but also highly ordered and obsessively arranged.

Beyond that is a dining space with an oval marble table like a sculpted egg. Over it hangs a crystal candelabra complete with fuchsia pink candles. The dining space is framed by a wall of glass sliding doors that are open with a view of manicured lawn that runs straight down to the river. At the end, where the grass slopes down a little, there is a row of cypress trees and through it I can see Eva's studio, a cube of slatted wood-and-glass windows that gleam back at me. I stand transfixed by it, her inner sanctum, the place where she took her last breath. For so long I've been an outsider staring in and I am here, at last, an insider looking out. So, this is what it feels like.

"Are you okay?" Jade's voice makes me jump.

"Sure, yes. Sorry." I turn around to face her.

"Well, I think Nate wants to do the interview in his study," she says, sliding the glass doors firmly shut and directing me back toward the kitchen area. "I'm Nate's niece, by the way. You've probably seen my aunt in photos?" The lilt in her voice is brittle rather than friendly. Kath's daughter, of course. I wonder why I've never read about her before.

"So you're working for Nate?"

"Not exactly working for him. I get lab credits for helping out with his research until I go back to uni next term."

"Sounds like a good arrangement," I say, noticing her worried expression. "I guess it's been pretty tough for you all, with the new inquest and everything?"

"Yeah, well." She shrugs. "Hopefully it's happening in a few months' time, if my mom gets her way. It's pretty much all she talks about."

"I don't blame her." I think back to the pictures of Kath in the papers after the first inquest. Standing on the courtroom steps, Nate had looked gaunt and quietly devastated while his sister-in-law had appeared undefeated, fighting for Eva's name.

"You must be proud of your mom still campaigning after two years. Is Nate behind it all too?" I say, watching a subtle shift in her features. She folds her arms, raises her chin. I can't help noticing the family resemblance in Jade's wide-set eyes framed by black bangs.

"Of course, he wants justice as much as she does."

"I'm sure, yes. It's only that I saw your mom's name in the papers and not Nate's. I wondered..."

"He prefers to stay out of the media, and I don't blame him for that." She gives me a fierce look and I'm not sure what to ask next without causing offence. I turn away from her for a moment, step closer to the pictures above the sofa as if I'm admiring them, feel her eyes bore into my back.

"You're not going to quote me, are you? About this, I mean."

"About what you've told me so far?" Maybe if you said something remotely interesting, I might , I say inwardly. "Of course not, it's completely off-the-record and I'd always ask your consent first. Anyway, it's not that kind of piece. Just a profile, an interview with Nate. I'm sure he probably told you about it?" I find myself mirroring her defensive tic, making answers sound more like questions.

She shakes her head.

"I wouldn't worry. It's a really positive take on Nate's resilience, what he's drawn on to get through his grief and his tireless commitment to work, of course." I repeat the soothing phrases I have perfected over the years, designed to reassure angsty interviewees and PRs. "And of course there's his new—"

"Good. The press has been pretty awful to Nate so far," she interrupts. "But I suppose you know about that already."

I know Jade's right about the press. When the story broke, they were brutal, camping on the pavement outside, asking him intrusive questions. At first, they were generous to Nate, casting him as the grieving scientist devoted to curing his wife's condition. But others were more vicious, preferring to portray him as overly absorbed in his work, remote, imperious. I remember thinking there was something in his manner that had been unlikable, an arrogance that didn't inspire much sympathy. One particularly bad scuffle with a photographer hadn't helped his cause.

"Okay. I'll check and see if he's off his call." She hesitates, glancing down at my feet. "Shit, sorry, I should have said earlier, would you mind taking your shoes off? It's a Nate thing."

"A Nate thing?" I repeat. "Are there any other Nate things you want to tell me about?"

She shrugs. "Well, he doesn't do small talk but I guess you know that already." She picks up a sleek silver gray cat, who purrs in her arms, surveying me placidly with its burnished orange eyes.

"He's pretty obsessional about this one too."

"Really? He doesn't strike me as an animal person." I reach out to stroke it.

"You'd be surprised. Her name's Nico." Jade smiles, barely. "She belonged to Eva. A present from him for her last birthday. She must never go outside, or upstairs in the bedrooms. Welcome to Nate's world."

I look around their kitchen area next to the living space, all gleaming surfaces, pristine if not a little soulless. I run my finger along the smooth gray marble of the kitchen island and peer into a bin—empty. Even their rubbish is nonexistent. I wonder if it's Nate's fastidiousness, or the design itself that dictates this way of living. Perhaps it makes sense. When something unpredictable happens in your life, you'll do anything to take control, create a veneer for yourself of stifling perfection where nothing bad can ever happen again.

Jade's phone dings. It's from Nate. "He's still a bit delayed but I can take you down to his office in ten minutes. Tea?"

"Sure, thanks." Turning, I notice the wall behind her, the only one that's bare with a row of ghostly square outlines where pictures must have once hung. "So where have they gone?" I nod over to them. "Another Nate thing?"

She flicks her hand in the air. "You'd have to ask him. I think they were Eva's drawings and sketches. There was so much of her stuff lying around, he's decided to give some of it away. He's starting on this floor and working his way up to the bedrooms."

It's a pointless task: however much he tries to remove all traces of her creativity, her presence is everywhere like a tangible energy. I catch sight of one of her sculptures near an archway that leads into a smaller space.

I get up and walk over. "Would you mind?" I sound tentative, even though I'm already stepping through. "Just for a bit of color."

She wavers, checks her watch. "Go on, then. I doubt you'll find much in there, but fine, if you're quick."

I can tell immediately that Jade is right. It is lackluster and gloomy, as sterile as roses wrapped in cellophane. I touch the chrome ridge of one of the mid-century leather chairs that face each other, glance at the requisite box of Kleenex on a table between them. What exchanges must've taken place here, the many stories that Eva heard? Above a low divan are shelves lined with books. Freud, Jung and Klein all present and correct.

Reading about her online, I couldn't help thinking that Eva's decision to become a psychotherapist didn't quite make sense. It didn't seem as though helping other people was a calling. If anything her work had reflected a certain level of self-absorption, along with a recurring theme of seeking out extreme sensation, neither of which seem ideal traits for a career in counseling. It was hard to imagine she was motivated by guilt or selflessness and yet somehow it didn't matter. Her honesty was refreshing. When I had chatted to her that time, I wanted to dislike her but I couldn't. I expected a dilettante but she was surprisingly serious about her pursuits.

Wikipedia didn't give much away about her background except that she grew up in Cornwall where her father had been a local councillor. He and her mother still lived in the farmhouse close to Padstow.

I spot a small framed photograph on her desk, Eva from a different time. Her jet-black hair is shorn into a pixie crop that accentuates her cheekbones. She leans back on an old Triumph motorbike, slim and tanned in cut-off denim shorts and a faded pink vest. Behind her stretches an epic landscape of sand dunes and sky.

It's all there in that one expression; defiant, completely free and very much in control. I can't resist. I have to take a picture of it. Jade has her back to me, making tea in the kitchen. I discreetly pull out my iPhone and focus on the image of Eva. As I drop the phone back into my pocket, I sense movement in the doorway behind me. I swivel around.

"You don't waste any time, do you?"

"Hi." I flush to the roots of my hair and look down as if I've been caught red-handed in the headmaster's study.

"It really is such a privilege to see journalistic curiosity in action," Nate says, a subtle shimmer in his eyes. He pauses for a brief moment in the open doorway, turns on his heels and walks away.