Bob didn’t say anything to that.
And when I finally looked at him he was passed out, dead drunk.
I didn’t go anywhere while he was sleeping. I didn’t do much.
I sat in the filth and I thought about stuff.
Of course, I knew from the tape that Violet wanted to die. Bob was working on less than half the picture and I had to tell him. But I wondered at first whether to bother. I was so angry at him for being wrong, for maybe making Dad leave. Not telling him felt like a fitting punishment, but only for a minute.
I knew it wasn’t Bob’s fault really.
I knew my dad wasn’t a good man.
The idea had been hanging around me for a while but I’d been ignoring it.
And I felt evil for thinking it.
But really I had no choice.
It’s what you do when you grow up, apparently, face up to things you’d rather not and accept the fact that nobody is who you thought they were, maybe not even close.
My dad was definitely not who I’d been thinking he was all these years.
It wasn’t because of what Bob or Jed or Norman or Mum had said about him. It wasn’t even about Violet.
It was all coming from me, doubts and bad thoughts.
The voice in my head was my voice, so I couldn’t get away from it.
And the voice was saying I’d known it all along. It was telling me I had all the evidence I needed.
Maybe he killed Violet and maybe he didn’t. I didn’t know anything.
And that’s the point.
The proof I had was the exact same reason I couldn’t be certain of anything I said about him, the reason he escaped all the blame and all the judgement I put my mum through the last few years, the reason I had him up on some stage for the blessed and the untouchable.
He wasn’t here.
And while I hadn’t given up all hope that he was dead in a freak accident or kidnapped by aliens or mistakenly locked in a nuthouse or lying in hospital piecing together what remained of his memory, I was beginning to realise it was far more likely that my dad just ran off because he felt like it. Violet or no Violet, he couldn’t be arsed with us any more. He’d had enough. And he got away with it, too.
So yes, my dad was cool and clever and funny and handsome, and his taste was impeccable and he looks good in photos, but that doesn’t add up to anything.
And I was angry that it took me so long to notice. I thought about how hard it must have been for Mum and Bob to keep quiet while I turned him into a hero, how many times they must have banged their heads against a wall while I went around in his suits and listened to his music and painted him whiter than white.
I only did it because I loved him.
And I thought, Did Violet come back for this, to show me this?
Did she wait in purgatory to point out what my dad was really like?
And what does it say about my dad that his best friend thought him capable of murder?
Not much.
In the end I woke Bob up and started talking.
“I found Violet in a cab office. I didn’t know she had anything to do with Dad when I found her,” I said. “I just wanted to put her somewhere better. It wasn’t a good place for her to be. And then everyone seemed to know who she was – you did and Norman did and Jed did and the dentist did. And she kept popping up everywhere and it was like she was trying to get my attention, trying to tell me something and I didn’t know what it was. And then I found a tape with her name on it so I kept it. It didn’t make it as far as the dump.”
Bob looked up at me then.
“It’s got Violet and Dad on it, talking,” I said. “She asked him, Bob. At the end of the tape she says I am asking you to help me die.”
He put his face in his hands and wept when I said that.
But I didn’t know what to do with it at all.
I didn’t know what to think or how to feel. Was everything better or was everything worse?
If I’d been a proper old-fashioned detective, or if I still had my Usborne How To Be A Private Eye kit, I would have dusted Violet’s urn for fingerprints. There were eight sets of prints on there because eight people handled her after she was dead.
Me,
Martha,
Pansy (probably moved it for dusting),
Norman (maybe working out if it was Pansy),
Mr Soprano from the cab office,
Jawad Saddaoui, the structural engineer from Morocco whose cab Violet got left in,
Mr Francis Macauley at the crematorium in Golders Green,
Pete Swain, missing journalist, angel of mercy and my dad.
At least he had the decency to organise her funeral. If you could call it organise, because him and Bob were the only people there.
Bob said they followed the body to Golders Green and then afterwards they got trashed in a pub around the corner.
My dad picked up her ashes the day after he fought with Bob. It’s on record at the crematorium that they were collected. I checked.
So it was my dad that left her ashes in the back of a cab and vanished, abandoning her as well as his wife, his parents, his daughter and two sons (one unborn) and his best friend.
I’ve decided you can look at it in two ways.
1 Violet asked my dad to help her die and broke his heart. He said no but she persuaded him that it was what she wanted and without him she would have to do it alone. He helped her because he cared about her and the strain of it pushed him to breaking point. Then his best friend accused him of murder and he realised nobody would believe him and he could end up in jail for helping her. So he cracked and had to get out, away from everything, away from us. You read about people doing it for less.In other words, he was a good person who did something brave and selfless and couldn’t handle the consequences.
2 Helping Violet die was his ticket out of here – help an old lady, get a new life. My dad didn’t do it for Violet, he didn’t give a damn about her really. He did it for what she promised him in return (enough money to get a new identity) and his conscience didn’t bat an eyelid.This makes him a self-serving, cold-hearted borderline sociopath.
I can’t decide between them or any of the grey areas in between and in the end I suppose it doesn’t matter either way.
He did what he did. She got what she wanted. He left.
Those are the things that count.
Violet was waiting when I got home from Bob’s. It was maybe four in the morning and I let myself in and didn’t make too much noise on the stairs and even my breathing sounded too loud and I locked my bedroom door behind me and got her out from under the bed. Her urn was so beautiful. The grain in the wood was intricate and clear, the polish was smooth and flawless in my hands. Did my dad think the same thing when he chose it? Or did he pick the cheapest thing in the brochure and never noticed how it shone?
I