Chapter 594:

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“Soraya had just come back to London. She didn’t have the resources to take anyone.” Cameron was already dialling. “She staged it. Your daughter has been at a friend’s flat the entire time.” He held out his phone. “That’s her. Talk to her.”

I didn’t wait to hear what was said.

Lochlan came with me. We stood in the hospital hallway. I looked at the wall opposite and tried to locate myself in the sequence of events that had led me here.

“Thank you,” I said eventually. “For bringing me.”

“You deserved to know.”

“I know.” I pressed my lips together. “I know she was my mother. I know this is supposed to feel like something—closure, or justice, or—I don’t know what it’s supposed to feel like.” I paused. “Mostly I just feel numb. Like I’m sitting in the audience watching someone else’s story and waiting to feel the thing I’m supposed to feel about it.”

Lochlan said nothing. He found my hand and held it, gently.

Reco𝗆m𝘦𝗻𝘥 𝗴а𝘭ոо𝘷el𝘴.𝖼𝗼𝘮 𝘁o 𝘆𝗈𝗎𝗿 𝖿𝗿і𝖾n𝖽ѕ

Things happened fast after that.

The man—Raymond Bates, a name I’d never forget—was charged with the vehicular murder of Marin Lockwood and her son Joel, and with the attempted murder of Hyacinth Galloway.

It didn’t surprise me when Raymond turned king’s evidence.

What surprised me, slightly, was how quickly he did it.

“The bank transfers are two decades old,” Lochlan told me, when we were back at my flat, “but they create a trail leading directly back to Gloria.”

“She was still finding her feet as a murderess back then,” Desmond quipped. “Her clean-up game wasn’t as sharp.”

“So they’ll definitely get her this time?” I asked.

Lochlan nodded. “Aaron is sinking a fortune into her defence. Calling in favours wherever he can, pushing for bail.”

“Won’t matter.” Desmond waved a hand. “The country’s best KC couldn’t bail her out of this. And besides—” he smiled, rather wickedly—”what do you think happens when the prosecution offers whoever turns on the other first a discount on their sentence?”

“They’ll be at each other’s throats,” I said.

“Exactly.”

Whatever happened to Gloria and Soraya after that, I found I genuinely didn’t care, as long as they stayed locked away and out of my life. Preferably forever. Preferably without appeal.

But not everyone wanted it that way.

When the call came, I took one look at the name on the screen and was tempted to hit decline and block the number permanently.

Then I thought: he’ll just show up at the door. He’s already done it before.

I answered.

“Hyacinth!” Aaron Lockwood’s voice was older than I remembered, and ragged at the edges. “You’ve got to help her. Please. You’ve got to save her.”

“She tried to kill me,” I said. It felt slightly absurd to have to point this out to the woman’s own husband, who had been present for every development of the case and therefore knew this as well as I did. “She—she didn’t mean it. She wasn’t in the right headspace, she was under enormous pressure, she—”

“Are you trying to argue diminished responsibility? Because if you genuinely believe she didn’t know what she was doing, then you’re the crazy one.”

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