CHAPTER 21
When I returned to my room following my meeting with Parker, to think about what needed to be done next, I found Annie sitting on the bed, waiting for me.
‘How was it?’
I shrugged.
‘Parker has my father’s shins.’
‘Oh.’
‘They’re in his desk drawer.’
She nodded slowly.
‘That seems like a sensible place for them.’
And we laughed, then, which was ridiculous, because it was ridiculous, and it broke my heart that all that man with such immense talent had been reduced to was two shin bones in a desk drawer, and a pile of paintings that nobody would ever see outside of Julia Fitzroy’s house. I had his notebooks, of course, piled up in two wooden boxes in the corner of my room. I hadn’t looked at them yet. They were filled with pictures of her. Her. I wasn’t sure what to call her. But in my mind, her or she would suffice for now.
Annie held out her arms to me and I sat with her on the bed, and we held one another in the way we had when we were children and had only recently become accustomed to doing again.
‘Did he ask you about the troupe, about getting back together again?’
I nodded.
‘I don’t know if I can. I don’t know what I want to do. We can’t even bury Father yet. Not that I’m sure he’d want that. What else ought I to do with shins? And the troupe,’ I continued, looking at her with a frown. ‘I don’t know if I can go on, after what she did. I don’t want anything to do with her. I just want…’
I looked at Annie then, properly, assessing her as I might assess someone I had never seen before. She smiled at me and she looked so kind and wonderful that I was afraid that if I told her she would try and stop me.
I took a deep breath, and withdrew my hand from hers.
‘I want to find her. My mother. And I want her to pay for what she did.’
‘You think she killed him then?’
I shrugged.
‘It’s been two weeks and we’ve heard nothing. She just left. She was seeing Brendan Fitzroy.’
‘Oh. I see.’ She reached out and held my hand again. ‘Promise me you won’t do anything rash - if you do find her.’
I took a long, hard look at Annie again before I replied.
‘I promise. But either way I have to find her. If only to find out why she left. But I know - I feel, really, that it was her. It seems like the only clear thing in this situation.’
I told her everything, including what Michael had told me about his secretly illustrious parentage and his suspicions and finally, hugely, that Augustine’s painting had been stolen.
‘I need to think about this,’ she said, as she gave my hand a long squeeze. ‘I need to get everything organised in my head. It’s a lot to take in.’
I agreed. Every bit of information was knocking around the inside of my head - like lost words caught by the breeze, it seemed that the key to understanding it was just out of my reach. Annie would likely find it worse - I had thrown odd facts at her in no particular order, only as they occurred to me. I’d likely remember more I ought to share, after she had gone.
‘Does Andrew know?’
I shook my head.
‘Can I tell him?’ she asked. ‘Once I've got it all straight. I think he’d be a big help - you know how logical he is.’
That much was certainly true.
‘Nobody else though. Not yet.’
Annie nodded and kissed me on the cheek.
‘Just us three, then.’
It would be four though. We needed four. I needed to visit the fourth again.