No Good Deed by Cass Green

Author:Cass Green
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780008319052
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2018-06-26T16:00:00+00:00

33

Nina

I watch the young woman opposite. Her eyes have been cast downwards the whole time she has been speaking. With her crossed legs, foot hooked around the other ankle, and her hunched shoulders, she looks oddly twisted, as though she is literally trying to hold herself together. She seems as though she has told this story many times before; it is recounted in such a logical and clear way.

‘That’s terrible,’ I say and I mean it. I don’t know what else to say. I wanted to throw up when Angel told me about the guinea pig. God, what sort of monster would do a thing like that?

My eyes burn with fatigue. It’s hard to focus and my mind is skittering about all over the place, bouncing between horror at what I have just heard, relief that I am no longer in danger, and uncertainty about what the hell I am supposed to do next.

There is a small part of me, too, wondering whether this appalling story can possibly be true. I mean, does Angel seem like a reliable historian? Then again, everyone knows about violent men who appear charming on the outside. But can Nick Quinn, a well-known public figure for the last twenty years, really have kept this dark side hidden? Jimmy Savile, Harvey Weinstein and others got away with so much in plain sight, says a quiet voice in my ear.

I sit forward and place my hands on the cool wood of the kitchen table.

‘Angel,’ I say gently. ‘I understand that you had a horrific childhood … one I can’t even begin to comprehend. But I still don’t understand what this has to do with the here and now. With what happened last night. Did Lucas murder that woman?’

Angel looks at me, finally. Her eyes are luminous and moist. She reaches for a cigarette and, with shaking hands, lights it. I decide to let it go this time.

When she speaks again, her voice is husky.

‘No, of course not. Please, let me just tell you the rest. It was Lucas, you see. He found Marianne, in the bath. Dead.’

‘Oh no.’ I cover my mouth with my hand. Angel begins to speak quickly, the words almost tumbling over each other.

‘I was out, seeing one of my friends from my old school,’ she says. ‘Lucas didn’t have any friends around there any more. And we didn’t like leaving her alone too long, then. It was like she was being eaten up from the inside with, I don’t know, cancer or something. Except it was her sense of who she was, that she was our mother, which was being eaten instead of her cells. She was always going on about failing us, about not being the mum we deserved.’ She pauses. ‘That’s what he did to her,’ she says with heat, mouth twisted. ‘Destroyed her and made her believe we would be better off with her gone.’

I don’t say anything. I can’t think of anything that would feel remotely adequate right now.

Angel swipes a hand under her noise, sniffing wetly.

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