Was the rocking faster now, or was it so only in the imagination of the watchers?

“I went to York. It took me all night. I walked and hitchhiked. I just had that rucksack, you know the one I used to carry my school books in, so I only had one change of clothes with me. I don’t know what I was thinking about, running away like that. It seems crazy now, doesn’t it?” Gillian smiled briefly at her sister. She could feel her heart hammering. It was becoming quite diffi cult to breathe. “I got to York at dawn. I’ll never forget the sight of the morning light hitting the Minster. It was beautiful. I wanted to stay there forever.” She stopped, put her hands firmly into her lap. The deep scratches showed. It couldn’t be helped. “I stayed in York that entire day. I was so frightened, Bobby. I’d never even been away from home for a night by myself, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to go on to London. I thought it might be easier if I went back to the farm. But I…I couldn’t. I just couldn’t.”

“What’s the point of this?” Jonah Clarence demanded. “How is all this supposed to help Roberta?”

Wary, Lynley glanced at him, but the man settled himself again. His face was rigid, every muscle tight.

“So I caught the train that night. There were so many stops, and at every one of them, I thought that I would be questioned. I thought that Papa might have sent the police after me, or come after me himself. But nothing happened. Until I got to King’s Cross.”

“You don’t need to tell her about the pimp,” Jonah whispered. “What’s the point?”

“There was a nice man at King’s Cross who bought me something to eat. I was so grateful to him. He was such a gentleman, I thought. But while I was eating and he was telling me about a house he had where I could live, another man came into the cafeteria. He saw us. He came up and said, ‘She’s coming with me.’ I thought he was a policeman, that he would make me go home again. I started to cry. I hung on to my friend. But he shook me off and ran out of the station.” She paused, caught in the memory of that night. “This new man was very different. His clothes were old, a bit shabby. But his voice was kind. He said his name was George Clarence, that he was a minister, and that the other man had wanted to take me to Soho to…to take me to Soho,” she repeated firmly. “He said he had a house in Camden Town where I could stay.”

Jonah remembered it all so vividly: the ancient rucksack, the frightened girl, the scuffed shoes and tattered jeans she wore. He remembered his father’s arrival and the conversation between his parents. The words “pimp from Soho…didn’t even understand… looks like she hasn’t slept at all…” echoed in his mind. He remembered watching her from the breakfast table where he’d been dividing his time between scrambled eggs and cramming for a literature test. She wouldn’t look at anyone. Not then.

“Mr. Clarence was very good to me, Bobby. I was like part of his family. I…I married his son Jonah. You’d love Jonah. He’s so gentle. So good. When I’m with him, I feel as if nothing could ever…nothing ever again,” she concluded.

It was enough. It was what she had come to do. Gillian looked at the psychiatrist beseechingly, waiting for direction from him, for his nod of dismissal. He merely watched her from behind the protection of his spectacles. They winked in the light. His face told her nothing, but his eyes were very kind.

“There. That’s it. It’s done nothing,” Jonah concluded decisively. “You’ve brought her up here to this all for nothing. I’m taking her home.” He began to get to his feet.

“Sit down,” Lynley said, his voice making it clear that the other man had no choice in the matter.

“Bobby, talk to me,” Gillian begged. “They say you killed Papa. But I know that you couldn’t have. You didn’t look like…There was no reason. I know it. Tell me there was no reason. He took us to church, he read to us, he made up games we could play. Bobby, you didn’t kill him, did you?”

“It’s important to you that I didn’t kill him, isn’t it?” Dr. Samuels said quietly. His voice was like a feather floating gently in the air between them.

“Yes,” Gillian responded immediately, although her eyes were on her sister. “I put the key under your pillow, Bobby. You were awake! I talked to you! I said ‘Use it tomorrow’ and you understood. Don’t tell me you didn’t understand. I know you did.”

“I was too young. I didn’t understand,” the doctor said.

“You had to understand! I told you I’d put a message in the Guardian, that it would say Nell Graham, remember? We loved that book, didn’t we? She was so brave and strong. It was the way we both wanted to be.”

“But I wasn’t strong, was I?” the doctor queried.

“You were! You didn’t look like…You were supposed to come to Harrogate! The message told you to come to Harrogate, Bobby! You were sixteen. You could have come!”

“I wasn’t like you at sixteen, Gillian. How could I have been?” The psychiatrist hadn’t moved in his chair. His eyes travelled between the two sisters, waiting for a sign, reading the underlying messages in body movements, posture, and tone of voice.

“You didn’t have to be! You weren’t supposed to be! All you had to do was come to Harrogate. Not to London, just to Harrogate. I would have taken you from there. But when you didn’t come, I thought-I believed-that you were all right. That nothing…that you were fine. You weren’t like Mummy. You were fi ne.”

“Like Mummy?”

“Yes, like Mummy. I was like her. Just exactly like. I could see it in the pictures. But you weren’t. So that made you fi ne.”

“What did it mean, to be like Mummy?” the doctor asked.

Gillian stiffened. Her mouth formed the single word no three times in rapid succession. It was too much to bear. She couldn’t go on.

“Was Bobby like Mummy in spite of what you believed?”

No!

“Don’t answer him, Nell,” Jonah Clarence muttered. “You don’t have to answer him. You’re not the patient here.”

Gillian looked at her hands. She felt the burden of guilt heavy upon her shoulders. The sound of her sister’s ceaseless rocking fi lled the air, the sound of tortured breathing, the beating of her own heart. She felt that she couldn’t go on. She knew she couldn’t turn back.

“You know why I left, don’t you?” she said hollowly. “It was because of the present on my birthday, the special present, the one…” Her hand went to her eyes. It shook. She controlled herself. “You must tell them the truth! You must tell them what happened! You can’t let them lock you away for the rest of your life!”

Silence. She couldn’t. It was in the past. It had all happened to someone else. Besides, the little eight-year-old who had followed her round the farm, who had watched her every movement with eyes shining with adoration, was dead. This gross, obscene creature before her was not Roberta. There was no need to go further. Roberta was gone.

Gillian lifted her head. Roberta’s eyes has shifted. They had moved to her, and in that movement Gillian saw that she had indeed broken through where the psychiatrist had failed these last three weeks. But there was no triumph in that knowledge. There was only condemnation. There was only facing, one last time, the immutable past.

“I didn’t understand,” Gillian said brokenly. “I was only four or five years old. You weren’t even born then. He said it was special. A kind of friendship fathers always had with their daughters. Like Lot.”

“Oh no,” Jonah whispered.

“Did he read the Bible to you, Bobby? He read it to me. He came in at night and sat on my bed and read the Bible to me. And as he read it-”

“No, no, no!”

“-his hand would fi nd me underneath the covers. ‘Do you like that, Gilly?’ he would ask me. ‘Does it make you happy? It makes Papa very happy. It’s so nice. So soft. Do you like it, Gilly?’”