Emily Barr - The Sleeper

I sense his approval. Even if it’s not really emanating from his grave, I know that the Laurie I loved would have wanted me to do this.

I have moved out of the house in Budock, and the furious Shakespearean cats have moved in, grudgingly, with Sam Finch, who is just beginning to discover how desirable a single, childless man in his thirties really is. Last time I spoke to him he said, ‘Can you believe it, Iris? I’ve got dates lined up for the next three Fridays and Saturdays. Different women each time! Amazing ones! What the hell do they see in a boring twat like me, hey?’

‘Oh, women like a boring twat,’ I assured him.

‘Cheers.’

‘Broody women who’ve been done over by boyfriends in the past. They love a … well, a stable man who’s not going to turn on them. That sounds better, doesn’t it, than a boring twat. It’s the same thing, though. I mean that affectionately.’

He laughed. ‘Thanks. If at some point I do settle down with one of them, I’ll get you to vet her first.’

‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘I will do my best to be utterly terrifying.’

Lara is living back in London: she and Sam spoke awkwardly and unhappily a couple of times when she got home. They will never speak again unless they have to to finalise the divorce. Some relationships will never have a happy-ever-after.

I have spent much of the summer with Lara, talking to her, wandering around London with her, looking at paintings, going to the cinema, walking by the river. She is wobbly, and she will be for a long time to come: she is only just beginning to contemplate the idea that one day she might get over Guy. She is eaten up with guilt and horror, and the renewed media frenzy when she was discovered was as much of an ordeal for her as anything that had gone before it. People still point her out on the street, even ask for her autograph. She is living in a studio apartment and taking things one day at a time; yet there are green shoots that I don’t think she can see yet. She has distanced herself from her parents, which she needed to do, and as a result she has become oddly close to Olivia, particularly in the months since baby Isaac was born on the first of May. He is an adorable baby: he makes me yearn for one of my own, and that has never happened before, not even when Laurie was alive.

Motherhood has changed Olivia. She is softer and gentler, but still one of the most formidable women I know. She and Isaac fill her Covent Garden flat perfectly, and she goes everywhere with him strapped into a sling on her stomach, gazing up at her with adoring eyes. ‘He’s the best thing I’ve ever done,’ she said the other day, watching him lying on the rug on her sitting room floor, cooing and gurgling for attention. ‘Whoever would have thought that? Isaac, would you like Auntie Iris to change your nappy? Or Auntie Lara?’

Lara did it. She still feels she owes the world everything, that she will be atoning for what happened to Guy and Rachel and Sam for the rest of her life. I hope she will move past that one day.

I walk out of the cemetery and into the busy London street. I have said goodbye to Laurie, and now I am free.

I call my mum. ‘I’ll be there in half an hour,’ I tell her, and she says happily that she will put the kettle on. It has been odd coming back into my family’s lives, and I, like Lara but differently, am forever trying not to be obsessed with my own feelings of horror at what I inflicted on them. They loved Laurie too; and when he died, they lost me as well. Now I am back, and although things are weird, they are good. We are nervous around each other, and my sister Lily is resentful of my strolling back in like the prodigal daughter when she has held my parents together for five long years, but things are better like this, at least, than they were before.

Lara and I never told anyone that we planted the heroin on Leon. Her addled plan to do to him what Jake had done to Rachel had actually worked. He was arrested for smuggling, and then, when everything else came to light, he was extradited to Britain and charged with murder too. One way and another, he will not be out of prison for a long time. Lara is dreading having to give evidence at his trial, but I know she will do it: she will look him in the eye and tell the world everything. Then, perhaps, she will move on.

As I approach the bus stop, I decide to make a phone call. Alex answers at once.

‘Iris! Are you OK? Been to the grave?’

‘Yes,’ I tell him. ‘And yes, of course I’m OK. That was good to do. I told him we’re going away. I said we’d be gone a year or so, at least. I know he can’t hear me, but I’m glad I did it.’

I step on to the bus and pass my Oyster card over the reader. It beeps, and I walk up the narrow staircase, still talking. I sit beside a window, turning to the view so the other passengers won’t have to listen to me.

‘No qualms, then?’ he is asking. I picture him, on his way to London, in his red jumper, his face newly shaven and eager.

I laugh. ‘Are you joking? A trip across the USA, and that’s just for starters? Of course no qualms at all. You?’

‘Oh my God. I can’t wait. I’ll see you at your parents’ place in a few hours. OK?’

‘I can’t wait either,’ I tell him, and I put the phone in my pocket and watch a flock of birds far away in the distance, heading south for the winter.