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I rewound the Dictaphone tape and sat looking at the picture of Gow, and I suddenly understood what Susie was laughing about. I started laughing myself. I felt so much affection for her and her bizarre take on everything that I ended up crying and laughing at the same time. I couldn’t stop. I couldn’t catch my breath or keep the noise down in case Yeni heard me. I was sobbing and laughing and coughing for about ten minutes.
I managed to clean my face up before I went downstairs. Yeni had put Margie to bed, thank God, and she didn’t see the mess I was in. Margie hasn’t asked for her mummy once since the conviction. I don’t think Yeni has told her that Susie isn’t coming back, she just seems to know.
Before we left for court on the morning of the verdict, Susie sat in the hall for ten minutes and just held Margie, smelling her hair and watching her move, as if she were trying to absorb her, memorize the sensation of her. Margie didn’t want to be on her lap. She squirmed and tried to get off, but Susie just held on, rubbing as much of her face as she could into her soft skin and hair, stroking her tiny ears with her lips. Sometimes, when she’s holding Margie, she gets this beatific look on her face as if nothing can hurt her because she has her baby. She never looks like that because I’m there.
I finally phoned Mum. Her voice was high and panicked, and she said she was on the verge of calling the police to come over to the house and check on me. I asked her why on earth she would do that. She fluffed her reply but basically seems to think I might try to kill myself and Margie. I told her not to be stupid: if I kill myself, who’ll organize the papers for the appeal? Then I realized how depressed and subordinate this made me sound. She wants to come over and visit. I said she could if she liked but it’s u
Dad came on and struggled to clear his throat for five minutes. Eventually he said he was sorry about what had happened. I accepted his condolences. He said they didn’t care about other people hearing about my problems (suddenly they’re my problems); what mattered was that we were all healthy. The devil-may-care posture was wearing thin.
He said, “They can’t take your health away from you, can they?”
I said, “Well, they can if they shoot you in the face,” which, far from sounding chipper and cavalier, only confused and frightened him. I hope he doesn’t repeat the comment to Mum; it would scare her as well. It’s imperative that they don’t come here.
Dad kept saying never mind, never mind, things will buck up. I suspect he always thought Susie was a bit racy because of the money and is glad to see the back of her. He actually said, “Chin up.” What happens to expats in Spain? He was a GP in Ayr for fifty years, and suddenly he starts talking like a regimental sergeant major, all Colman’s mustard and fucking Bovril. They ended a discussion about my wife’s murder conviction by asking me to send them water biscuits. I felt like shitting in a box and sending it registered.
I keep thinking about Cape Wrath. There have been a lot of different versions printed in the papers. The articles reproduce a map of the cape with the red Ministry of Defense training area warnings saying DANGER AREA all over them. It’s very dramatic.
My version of Cape Wrath is different from the others because it doesn’t start with a long drive or a beautiful, dark-haired psychiatrist walking into a small hotel. Mine starts with Margie eating breakfast and an early-morning phone call: it was a Friday morning in late September. Susie answered the phone in the hall, said, “Oh, it’s you,” and turned away so I couldn’t hear what she was saying. In the police’s version it was Gow on the phone, telling Susie where he was, perhaps inviting her there. In the Susie version it was Do
I can’t sleep again. I’ve been lying in bed for two and half hours, and I keep getting rushes of adrenaline that make me want to sit up and start punching. I sat in a hot bath, breathing deeply, and drank a hot toddy, but when I lay down again, I wished I could go for a mad, high-kneed run around the garden. Tasks and their possible permutations keep coming into my mind when I lie down. I feel as if I’m trying to remembering things, things that will slip out of my mind if I don’t wake up and write them down immediately. There are bits of paper all over the house with pointless things like “shop- get veg,” “Phone Fitzg. re times,” “clothing- ENOUGH?” Sometimes I can’t remember what these important notes mean the next day. More often I can remember and they don’t matter. I think I’m hoping that I will stumble across the single shred of relevant information that will make sense of the whole episode. Maybe that’s what I’m doing up here in the middle of the night.
I press the button and Susie’s voice fills the room.
“No, Do
“Gow is an interesting character. Like many serial killers, he was very taken with his press coverage. He remembered the names of journalists who had written about him, imputed an admiring relationship between them. He actually referred to them as ‘my fans.’… No, he didn’t like all the coverage, sometimes he’d get very angry. He was terribly angry with his ex-wife, Lara Orr, but that all stopped when Do
The interviewer interrupts her. He tells her a quick story, which I can’t hear, about a friend called Harold, I think, and then asks her a question.
“Yeah, lots of people do visit. Gow comes over quite well. It’s the set-up that gives him the edge. You see, he’s very confident, self-assured in the way that only people with no self-doubt or insight can be, and meeting that sort of certainty can feel quite intoxicating. A lot of sensible people came under his spell.”