Free The Night Hunter by Caro Ramsay Page B

thoughts. I think they have been talking about me. I wonder when she last saw her own parents. I’m pretty sure Parnell has annexed Mary from them as he has annexed her from all her friends. ‘Poor Grant, he must have been very close to Sophie for him to fall apart like that.’
    I shrug. This is a theme of Mary’s; the relationship between siblings holds fascination for an only child. ‘They were, once, but he just gets on her nerves now. Grant has always been self-centred, he loves winding Mum up. He was close to Dad, I suppose. Things change. We are all diminished without Sophie, every one of us.’ I tug the lace of my shoe really tight, tying it in a knot. For a minute I don’t look at Mary. ‘But nothing is going to happen to me, I am invincible.’
    She shakes her head. ‘Nobody is invincible.’
    ‘Your son thinks he is when he’s on that swing.’
    ‘Oh God, he’s awful, isn’t he?’ She sighs. ‘I wish we weren’t going to this thing tonight, I really don’t feel like it. I never feel like it.’ She leans forward to the coffee table and pulls
Catch-22
off my Krav Maga manual.
    ‘Is this the weird thing you do in the garden? It keeps you very fit.’ She flicks through the pages. ‘Oh, it’s self-defence. Is it vicious?’
    ‘It is the way I do it.’
    She raises her eyebrows, then sees my battered
Complete Poems of Christina Rossetti
. ‘You never tire of reading this, do you?
Goblin Market
?’
    ‘I’ll never tire of it.’
    ‘They were lucky girls,’ she says. ‘Lizzie and Laura. To have each other.’
    We were lucky girls.
    ‘I gave up my degree before we got to the Romantics. Alex got me a first edition of her collected works just because I mentioned this poem to him. Then he gave me a telling-off for reading it in case I mark it. It is
that
valuable. He bought it as an investment, so it has to sit on a stand in the living room and be admired, not read. He knows the cost of everything and the value of nothing. He thinks I’m bored up here.’
    ‘You are.’
    She stands up and gives me a wry smile. Her hand goes to the top of her left thigh, another little rub, another little bruise. She walks towards the door, reluctant to leave.
    I say, ‘I need to go to Glasgow now, so I’ll let you know once I’m free then we can hook up and I’ll take Charlie. I might even take him to the Goblin Market if we have time.’
    ‘So he gets to see the secret garden and I don’t?’ Her anxiety has passed.
    ‘He’ll like it.’
    ‘
Tender Lizzie could not bear to watch her sister’s cankerous care, yet not to share …
’ Her hand sits on the handle of the door, her fingers curl round it and she looks down the stairs in that abstract way she has. ‘And I know that you do care. For Sophie. She’s very lucky.’ I cannot read her expression, there is nothing I can reference.
    ‘I feel a bit guilty that you’re paying me to look after him when I’m caught up in all this.’
    ‘I wouldn’t worry about it. Alex didn’t employ you to look after Charlie; he employed you to spy on me and he thinks you’re good at it. He likes the way you rarely let me out of your sight. He thinks that you can’t tell a lie because you lack imagination.’
    ‘Shows what a bad judge of character he is.’
    Billy Hopkirk seems to be an expert at parking illegally and not being seen. First he double parked as we dropped Charlie off at the flat in Park Circus. Mary was back from a stressful trip to Buchanan Galleries to buy a new dress, one to cover the bruises, no doubt. I spent a couple of minutes reassuring Mary that the dress – a long, swirling black number – was fabulous and she believed me.
    Now Billy is stuck in the car park at the Western Hospital, without a ticket. He keeps looking at his watch. He wants us to be a bit late so that ‘Jack’ will be in a hurry and want rid of us, but not so much of a hurry that he’ll blow us out altogether. So far he has refused to enlighten me about who