Page 63 of The Ex

Then she lit the candles and sang ‘Happy Birthday’. The three of them blew out the candles, and Tommy sat on Sam’s knee to eat a slice of cake and covered himself and Sam in jam and buttercream. Sam knows he was there, that he blew out the candles and ate the cake, but he has almost no memory of himself, of how the cake tasted, nor of what he and Naomi said to one another.

Now he pushes open the door to Tommy’s old nursery, the pale grey-blue walls the freshest in the whole place, a taste of what the house could be – will be, once the new owner takes it over. Sam suspects the whole place will be completely refurbished: rewired, new bathrooms, new kitchen, wireless broadband that works in all the rooms not just the kitchen and the living room. He hopes the new owner will treat it with respect.

Inside the nursery, he turns a slow circle. All that remains is the Roman blind Joyce made. Naomi sold the cot two weeks ago on eBay, along with the customised tallboy – both went for peanuts.

There was no room for those things in her house.

‘Joyce,’ he whispers into the silence. ‘Gran. It’s me.’

He wonders what he would say to her now, here in the dark, the night before his wedding. What she would say to him. She’d be awake too, he thinks. The two of them would be out in the back garden, watching the stars, Joyce sipping a sickly-sweet Amaretto, him a meditative whisky. She is in the walls of this place. She is in the air. The fact that she is not physically here is impossible. That he cannot talk to her ever again, only imagine himself talking to her, is a place beyond pain somewhere within him. He will carry her there, in that place, for ever. What would he say to her now?

What happened?Yes, maybe.Who hit you? Whomurderedyou?

At the thought, the waves of guilt that have accompanied his anger and confusion wash over him from head to toe. He should have been here. He should have come home earlier. He should not have called her name. If he had not…

The police have scaled back their investigation. There have been no new leads, only the vague hope that one day soon, the thug who did it will be arrested for something else and a match found for the fingerprints, the E-FIT image. When Sam gave his statement, Robbie Brigstock, who he knew from school and who was a DS now, went in quite hard, going on about the fact that there was so much money in Joyce’s estate, that Sam must have realised he was a very wealthy man now. He tried to push him and push him, though both of them knew he had nothing to do with it.

‘Sorry, mate,’ he said afterwards. ‘I have to ask these questions.’

‘Don’t worry about it. But who would have done that to her? And not eventakeanything?’

‘Kids, I imagine. Don’t think it will have been anyone local. On your own doorstep and all that. Bungled robbery, everything went tits-up, I reckon. They didn’t realise she was in the house or awake or whatever. But with prints that don’t match anything on file and no murder weapon, we’re stuffed.’

‘Do you think…’ Sam started.

‘Do I think what? Go on, say it.’

Sam studied Robbie’s face, but found only concern. A few years younger than him at Lyme Secondary, it was weird to face him across a cheap table in an interview room in such grave circumstances.

‘Do you think when I came home… you know, when I called her name… do you think he heard me and panicked?’

‘It’s possible. It’s possible that while you were checking out the back, he made it out the front. We found a partial print to match the back door on the doorknob at the front.’

‘Yes. No. I mean… do you think it’s possible he panicked and… and hit her? Do you think me coming in and shouting—’

Robbie clapped his arm. ‘Mate. You can’t think like that. Don’t do that to yourself, all right? You can’t do that to yourself.’

By which Sam knew he meantyes. Yes, it was possible that without meaning to, he had caused his own gran’s death at the hands of a mindless thug who didn’t even get as far as the safe.

‘The safe,’ he whispers now, padding downstairs in his pyjamas and slippers. ‘Idiot.’

On the way to empty the money from the safe, he stops in the kitchen, where his old camping kettle sits on the range ready for the morning. In the fridge, half a pint of milk, the last scrapings of butter and a jar of the jam Joyce made from the damsons at the end of the first lawn. In the breadbin, her home-made wholemeal bread from the freezer. How can he bear to eat these things, the last of her? How can he bear to leave this house, where she is everywhere? How could he have sold it? What was he thinking? He could have persuaded Naomi to sellherhouse. That would have given them enough money to modernise this place surely? They could have done it bit by bit, enjoyed the journey. Why didn’t he think of that? He has always, always wanted to open a gardening activity centre for primary school kids here, somewhere they could come on school trips and learn how to plant, prune, make grow. He even voiced this to Naomi a week or two earlier, but she told him it would never earn any money, and immediately he saw, or thought he saw, that she was right. Now, in the silence, feeling Joyce so close, he is not sure.

‘The safe, Sam,’ he whispers to himself.The safe, the safe, before you forget it.

He flicks the light to the basement and heads down the cold stone steps. The coal is still there, damn. He has forgotten to clear out the tins of paint, the white spirit, Joyce’s paintbrushes and collection of old rags, her round-ended trowel, her tools. The coal will serve the guy who is moving in, if he decides to keep the fireplace, if indeed he is even moving in. Possibly he will want this place as a grand holiday home overlooking the sea. Whatever, it is too late to shift any of it now, at 4.30 a.m. on the day of his wedding.

He inputs the combination and opens the safe. Immediately he sees that the money is no longer there, no large manila envelopes with hard cardboard backs. He never counted it, but he knows there were three envelopes, and at least two hundred thousand pounds.

‘If the banks go down the pan,’ Joyce said to him once, ‘we go down the pan with them.’

The cash was her insurance policy. And now it is gone. The burglar didn’t know where the safe was, let alone the combination.

So how?

When the police were here, he told the cop – Stuart, was it? – he told Stuart the combination, or did he tell Naomi? Did Naomi offer to check the safe? Whatever, Naomi was there, she would have heard him tell Stuart. Surely the cop wouldn’t have taken it? Surely neither of them would have? Unless it was Sam himself and he’s forgotten. God knows he’s been spaced out these last weeks.

He climbs the cellar stairs, preoccupied. He can’t call his bride on the morning of their wedding and ask her if she took Joyce’s cash, can he? It would ruin everything, stain the perfection Naomi has worked so hard to create from disaster. But he has to know. If it wasn’t her, then he will have to contact the police.

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