Page 64 of After the Accident
Emma:I’d obviously seen what happened – and heard Julius’s: ‘What did you do?’ – but it was only then that it properly sunk in.
They thought I’d deliberately poisoned Dad.
Julius:Everyone around that table knew what she did.
Daniel:She knows what she did.
Liz:I don’t think there was any doubt about what Emma tried to do to her father. She should have been prosecuted.
Victor:She got his food – and then he almost died. What more is there to say?
Emma:Mum was almost whispering when she was talking to me. She said: ‘I think you should leave the table now.’
I wanted to defend myself, but, as I looked around, I realised she was saying what everyone else was thinking. Dad was still struggling to breathe – but he was staring at the empty space on the table in front of him. Nobody wanted me there, so I did the only thing I could. I stood up and I left.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Day Seven
IT’S A SECRET
Emma:I didn’t leave the cottage until five minutes to midday the next day. I heard Mum and Dad get back to their cottage the night before – and I heard them moving around in the morning – but nobody knocked on my door.
Daniel:Everyone had breakfast together on the final day – and it was a joyous occasion. It was nice to be surrounded by people who enjoyed one another’s company and who were all on the same page.
That’s how the entire holiday should have been.
Emma:I don’t know if this happened – but I’d assume Dad went out in a car that morning to collect whatever it was he had to collect, from wherever it was he had to collect it. He wouldn’t have left the island without completing the one job he went there to do.
I’d almost forgotten about it by the time I got to the lobby. There were taxis ordered that were due to take us back to the airport. They weren’t coming until 12.30 – but I had to check out at 12, which meant thirty awkward minutes in that lobby.
Mum and Dad were by the main hotel doors, while the twins were nearby on a small sofa, playing on their iPads. Daniel and Liz were hanging around, but there was no sign of Julius.
I sat on a chair across the lobby from everyone, trying not to make eye contact. I had a magazine that I was going to read – or at least pretend to – but then Victor plopped himself down on the arm of my chair.
Victor:I was trying to be friendly. Nobody else was talking to her. I said: ‘Your holiday went about as well as mine.’
Emma:I replied: ‘Your wife dumped you and went home almost as soon as she arrived.’
Victor:‘Exactly!’
Emma:He laughed and said that, in many ways, it meant he’d had a better time of it than me. I suppose it was hard to disagree, though I didn’t feel much like laughing. He’d had a strange sort of reinvention in those few days he’d been AWOL. Singledom and island life probably suited him more than it would most people. I guess it’s easier when you’re a forty-year-old man living off daddy’s money.
He rested a hand on my knee and said: ‘I’m here for you.’
I gave him the full ‘Really?’treatment and he shrugged it away.
Victor:Worth a go, wasn’t it?
Emma:I told him that I wasn’t interested and then picked up my case and headed across towards the twins. There was still no sign of Julius – and if Mum or Dad wanted to tell me to leave the girls alone, then they could at least do it in front of their faces.
As it was, nobody bothered me. I put my case on the floor and sat on it in front of Amy and Chloe. I thought for a moment that they’d continue playing on their iPads. They didn’t put them down immediately, but, after a few seconds, Amy lowered hers first. She glanced across to the door and then said, very quietly: ‘Daddy says we’re not supposed to be talking to you.’
Daniel:The absolute gall of that girl – after what she’d tried to pull the night before.
Emma:Chloe had put down her iPad by that point too – and both girls were looking at me. They were dressed identically, with matching tops that said ‘Galanikos Girl’ across the front.
I told them that if I didn’t see them for a while, then it wasn’t because I didn’t want to. I explained that their dad and I had had a bit of a falling out, but that I hoped, in time, we’d make it up and I’d be able to spend time with them again.
