started to laugh. All heaving bosom in some gruesome draped polyester number – from Primark, by the looks. Fashion that loved the thin, young and long-limbed, but was rather less forgiving of the chubby possessor of a G cup. ‘Do us a favour, girl. The rum and Coke’s all on you once we hit Torremolinos.’ She cast a glance to someone just out of the frame. ‘Ain’t that right, Shaz? Drinks on her, innit? With her fancy book ting and that.’
There was giggling in the background as Aunty Sharon appeared in front of the camera, the flesh of her sturdy arm wobbling as she stirred something in a mixing bowl. ‘Take no notice of her, darling. What’s the matter? Tell your Aunty Shaz.’
George tutted dolefully. Wondering if her family knowing the truth – at least in part – would be quite that bad. ‘Things have gone a bit tits up on the work front, if I’m honest.’
‘You paying your fair share of the holidays, though!’ her mother said, pointing at her with one of those Uncle Sam talons.
‘Yeah, yeah,’ George said, contemplating the modest balance in her account and the £500 she owed Aunty Sharon. Van den Bergen would surely lend her the rest. Wouldn’t he? ‘But my publisher has pulled out of the next book. And if I don’t publish every year, my funders won’t look kindly on me…’ She chewed her bottom lip, knowing she’d already said too much, but feeling the words pushing for release. ‘And if I can’t get funding, I won’t get my tenure renewed at St John’s.’
‘What the fuck does that mean? What hoity-toity bullshit you coming out with now?’ Letitia asked, flicking her ash into the palm of her left hand.
Aunty Sharon approached the camera and budged her sister out of the way on the well-worn old sofa. A look of alarm on her kind, unadorned face. She clutched at her mixing bowl as though it were a baby. ‘You gonna get the push, love?’
Though she tried desperately to hold them back, the rogue tears burst forth, and George could only submit to a bout of racking sobs. ‘I’ve already been given the push, Aunty Shaz. The Peterhulme Trust rejected my proposal for a new study.’
As Aunty Sharon reached out to stroke George’s image on her screen, Letitia elbowed her sister out of the way. ‘You need to come home is what you need to do, girl. Get your shit together. Get a proper bloody job. Not this arty-farty bollocks that white witch got you doing. Sally fucking Wright. Where’s Professor Fucking Do-Gooder when your shit’s hitting the fan, eh?’ She narrowed those eyes, the curling holiday false eyelashes obscuring the true intent behind them. ‘Or maybe she’s stirring the shit because you wouldn’t toe the line. Is that it? Am I right?’ She sucked her teeth loud and long, having nailed the truth of the situation. ‘Oh yeah. I see this now. And there’s you, flying across the North Sea every five minutes to service the Jolly Green Giant’s needs so you’ve not got a nicker to your name.’ She snapped her fingers and folded her arms triumphantly. ‘Bending over for Sally Wright. Blowing off Van der Twat and still no sign of commitment.’ She broke into patois. ‘Yu caan tun duck off a nest. Know what I mean? You ain’t going nowhere. You need to change your shit up, Ella.’
‘Don’t call me Ella. You know I hate it.’
‘She’s right, George,’ Aunty Sharon said, muscling her way back into the frame. ‘You letting people walk all over you, darling. But never mind.’ She started to beat her cake mixture anew, a look of grim determination on her face. Her towering confection of silk scarf and hair extensions shook with the effort. ‘This break will do you good. Tinesha’s coming home this afternoon. Patrice has even put his Nikes through the wash, can you believe it? And your dad…’ She glanced at Letitia. Her concerned frown was almost imperceptible. ‘Well, let’s just say some of that paella and sangria will fatten him up. You’ll be with your own, love. Give you time to mull things over, like. I can always get you a job with me behind the bar at Skin Licks, if you like.’
George swallowed hard at the thought of doling out vodka tonics to dirty old men at the Soho titty bar where she had once cleaned. Sticky glasses, stale booze and sodden beermats. Sod that. ‘Nah. You’re all right, Aunty Shaz. I’ll work it out.’
‘You need to be with your family for a bit,’ Letitia said. ‘Blood’s thicker than water, innit?’
Nodding, George glanced down at her phone. Noticed a text from Van den Bergen and absently started to read it. Felt the tears evaporate away as the fire lit within her again.
‘Home late. Nipping to Tamara’s first, then got a few people to interview. Don’t wait up.’
Was this it? Life with a policeman? A life sentence, trapped in a situation where Van den Bergen’s ‘girls’ always came first. And plans for their future together always came last. Perhaps Letitia, Queen of Shit-Stirrers, was right. Maybe it was time to change her shit up.
‘Listen,’ she said, studying the unlikely twosome of her homely, long-suffering aunt and her slowly dying glamour puss of a mother, with her sickle-cell anaemia and pulmonary hypertension and her Lambert & Butlers. ‘I’m gonna finish packing. I’ll see you tomorrow morning at Gatwick.’
Faking a smile, she severed the connection to her family and flopped back into the sagging second-hand sofa, like a deflating blow-up doll who serviced everybody’s needs but her own. With work-worn hands, she fingered the cashmere throw that she’d bought for Van den Bergen to cover the well-worn chintzy upholstery. Swallowing a sob, she savoured the memories of both her mother and her father having slept there, eschewing the uncomfortable guest bed. Her mother had been lured away and abducted by a psychopath. Her father, recovering after years of slave labour, had been unwittingly working for the same psychopath in the Coba Cartel. Happy families happened to other people, she mused, picking off the bobbles where the cashmere had started to pill.
And then there was the spectre of her own recent memory, having spent the night on the sofa only the previous Saturday after an argument with her ill-tempered lover. She allowed the loneliness to engulf her. Wept. Imagined the warmth of the Spanish sun on her skin and the barbed tongue of her mother as she sipped rum and passed harsh judgement on the pasty Thomson travellers that weren’t part of their noisy extended clan.
But then, her phone rang. Van den Bergen was on the other end, sounding flustered.
‘You won’t believe what happened to me today,’ he said. ‘And I’ve just come from the mortuary. Honestly, George. I’ve stumbled across something crazy.’
‘Yeah?’ she said, chewing the inside of her cheek. ‘Well you can tell it to Tamara, can’t you? I’m going on holiday.’
‘No! You can’t. That’s why I’m calling. I need your help. I’m not going to Tamara’s now. I’ll tell you when I get back. I’m on my way—’
‘Paul! No!’ she said. But it was too late. He’d hung up, pronouncing the death of her holiday plans whether she liked it or not.
Amsterdam, mortuary, later still
White walls. Stainless steel slab. Greying corpse. George hated the mortuary. And yet, here she was, with Marianne de Koninck staring at the side of her head, waiting for signs of weakness, no doubt.
‘I wanted you to see this,’ Van den Bergen said, beckoning her close.
‘Not the sort of date night I had in mind.’ George clutched her inadequate cardigan closed against the cold. It was always chilly down there.
He turned to the head of forensic pathology and nodded. ‘Tell her, Marianne!’
The tall pathologist took her place at the side of the old man’s body, spreading ribs that had already been sawn down the middle. George grimaced at the sight of the dark cavity where his heart had been, feeling deep-seated sadness