The Girl Who Stole the Apple

‘For crying out loud, Sam, talk to me.’

Sam slowed, very gradually. Eventually he stopped rocking altogether. Now he sat, rigid except for the slightest shake, head cocked as if he was listening to something far away.

‘I lied,’ he said. He turned to look at her, as if to gauge her response.

‘About what?’

‘About Ellie.’

‘What the hell do you mean?’ She said this in an urgent whisper, fighting the urge to shout at him, conscious there was only a single door between them and Beth.

‘It wasn’t a hit-and-run.’ There was a long pause. Sam was stock still, but panting fast as if he had just run up a steep hill. Maggie held her thoughts and her tongue, waiting for him to continue.

‘It was six weeks and one day ago. She went out about six o’clock after the three of us had had a Welsh rarebit supper. I thought she was going to the gym. I even put Beth to bed.’ He spoke haltingly, a sentence at a time, complete with full stops and pauses.

‘Then she rang. She was really strange. Started to tell me how she loved me and Beth. She told me that I had to tell Beth that as soon as she woke up in the morning. Because she wouldn’t be there to tell her herself.’

There was another long pause.

‘What the hell are you saying, Sam? That Ellie walked out on the both of you? On her daughter? That’s crazy. Ridiculous!’

Finally Sam looked at her and Maggie saw the agony in his face. ‘She shot herself, Maggie. Right there, on the phone. She said goodbye and . . .’ He waved his hands in the air in despair. ‘Bang!’ He clapped his hands against his temples, again and again, harder and harder. ‘Bang!’ Then he began to cry.

* * *

‘Why would Ellie kill herself?’ Maggie said. Five minutes had passed since Sam had dropped the bomb of Ellie’s suicide into the room and he’s said nothing since. He had sat on the bed, intermittently rocking backwards and forwards as if in time to music only he could hear.

‘Tell me, Sam,’ Maggie said. ‘Was she depressed? Had something happened?’

‘I don’t think so,’ he said.

Outside in the corridor a man and a woman stumbled past. He was talking urgently and she was laughing.

Maggie waited until she heard the door slam shut behind them.

‘Christ, Sam, you must have noticed!’ She hissed the words, leaning forward towards him, cons

cious of the child in the adjoining room.

He stood up and walked over to the window. He pulled aside a corner of the curtain and peered out. Then he turned round. ‘They did it,’ he said.

Maggie felt like grabbing him and shaking the truth out of him. But she didn’t. She straightened herself. ‘Who are they?’

He shrugged. ‘They wanted Ellie dead, and now they want you and me dead too.’

Maggie tried not to jump to conclusions, but it was hard not to, given what she knew about Sam. Coming out of Sam’s mouth they could mean anything: his own paranoia, the voices in his head, the man who he had imagined was watching him on the bus, the woman at the supermarket till, the news presenter on the TV.

‘Sam,’ she said sharply, forcing him to look at her. ‘Why did you come to the shop?’

He closed his eyes and swayed like a poplar in the wind. ‘I couldn’t leave Beth, could I? Not for a moment. Not with them out there watching. But I needed to find you. I thought she would be safer dressed up. That way, no one would recognise her. She loves being Snow White. She really got into it. What with picking through the apples and accusing the woman of poisoning one.’ Sam’s torrent of words stopped. He smiled. It was the smile of a proud father.

But Maggie had no intention of letting it rest there. ‘Was it you who set off the firebomb in the shop?’ It was an accusation, not a question. The only thing that was missing was the word ‘why.’

Finally Sam opened his eyes. He rubbed the sockets with the palms of his hands. The image of the three monkeys popped into Maggie’s head. Hear no evil. See no evil. Speak no evil.

‘Of course I didn’t. What the hell do you take me for?’

‘So it was just a coincidence that you came to the shop that evening and that as soon as you left there was an explosion. Is that what you’re telling me?’