style="font-size:15px;"> “Mum and Dad will find out anyway if the toxicology results come back positive.”
Nate looked into my eyes with a hunted expression. “Your dad was brilliant today,” he slurred. “Identified her. Couldn’t face it, see?”
“I know. He said.”
“Did he?” Fat tears rolled down his cheeks. “The thought of her smashed up.”
“Try not to think about it.” Pain shot through me with fury, scorching my head. I had to concentrate on practicalities. I had to focus on the ‘why’ of it all. If I didn’t, I’d fall apart and be no good to anyone. And Nate needed me strong, Mum and Dad too. “Have you eaten? I could fix you something.”
He took a gulp of neat, obliterating booze, by way of an answer. “Sweet of you,” he said with a crooked smile, “but this is fine.”
“You must look after yourself, Nate. Scarlet wouldn’t want to see you like this.”
Eyes half-closed, heavy-lidded, he turned to me with a slow expression. “Like what?”
“Hurting. Drinking. Destroyed.”
“Maybe, you’re wrong,” he said, with an ugly drunken expression. “Maybe she would.”
What did Nate mean? Booze talk, I thought, and maybe there were always odd little inconsistencies in the way people behaved in the wake of sudden death, but I couldn’t ignore the remark from an experienced firefighter. I couldn’t ignore the fact that Scarlet was the safest driver I knew.
Best to come clean.
“I didn’t find Scarlet’s bracelet, but I did find this.” I showed Nate the scrap of paper with the name and address scrawled on it. “Mean anything to you?”
He stared, frowned at the name and address on the paper and made a sound similar to the half grunt half sigh Zach had issued earlier. “Charlie Binns? Never heard of him.”
“You’re sure?”
“Who the hell is he?” He sounded accusing. I spread my hands, couldn’t say. “How much do you actually know?” The tone of his voice had that nasty ‘bad news’ ring to it – strange bearing in mind the morning’s breaking headline.
My tongue tangled in my teeth and I bit down painfully on the inside of my cheek because I was right to be suspicious. There was definitely more going on underneath the surface. Nate’s response pretty much confirmed it.
“How well did you really know your sister, Molly?”
He didn’t wait for a reply. “She’d been edgy and moody for a while. You must have noticed.”
I flinched, forced myself to face the unthinkable: I’d been too obsessed by my own feelings of resentment to notice my sister’s emotional state. Didn’t make me feel good.
“Naturally, I asked her what was wrong,” Nate continued, “but she never said. I thought it was the stress of work and suggested a weekend away. Then that conference in London came up.”
On Critical Care, I remembered, about three weeks ago.
“I suggested I could go with her, we could make it a long weekend, but Scarlet wasn’t keen,” Nate continued. “Used that old excuse about not mixing business with pleasure.”
“Seems perfectly reasonable to me.”
“Except the conference takes place later this month.”
“What? You mean —”
“Scarlet enjoyed a weekend away without me.”
I stared at the writing in my hand. “She definitely went to London?”
“According to the hotel she phoned from, but I’ve no idea who she was with. Maybe now we know,” he said, eyeing the piece of paper.
I pressed a hand tight to my forehead. For Scarlet to break her own moral code would be massive. It would have ripped her apart. And what about a lover? Was there some guy waiting for a phone call or a visit from her that would never happen? No, it wasn’t possible, I thought firmly. No way could I believe that Scarlet would have an affair. It just wasn’t in her DNA.
“To be charitable,” Nate said in a tone adopted by those who have right on their side, “she might have gone to London alone.”
Which still didn’t explain what she might have been doing there. “How did she behave when she got back?”
“Sunny as hell. Said the conference had been good. Informative, was the exact word she used.”
“And what did she say when you pointed out the lie?”
“I didn’t.”
I straightened up. “Your wife goes to a bogus conference and you don’t challenge her, you don’t breathe a word?”
“I wanted to wait it out, bide my time, see what happened.”
In similar circumstances, I couldn’t see me keeping my mouth shut. Maybe I was unsophisticated and impetuous.
“Certainly nothing on her phone or emails.”
“You snooped on them?” I didn’t hold with that.
Nate gave me a brazen look. Who are you to judge me now? His expression said. And he was right. I took a breath.
“What’s the name of the hotel Scarlet stayed in?”
Irritation chased across Nate’s features. “Leave it, Molly.”
“Nate, all we have at the moment are wild guesses. I want facts. I want the truth. I need to understand why Scarlet died.”
“There is no why. It was an accident.”
Yes, it was. Or I thought it was. “Bu — t”
“It won’t bring her back. It won’t do any good.”
“Nate, don’t you want to know?”
He sidestepped my question. “Your dad has it all under control.”
“If you don’t tell me the name of the hotel, I’ll ask Mum.” The expression on my face assured Nate that I wasn’t bluffing, and I wasn’t giving up. With bad grace, he gave an address near Paddington train station.
“And the room number?”
“Molly —”
“It might help to put your mind at rest, give you closure.”
“That, I doubt.”
“Please,
