Page 105 of The Family Remains

A gun.

A handgun.

Just sitting there.

She took a few photographs of it and then slammed the drawer closed again.

‘Are you OK, Mrs Rimmer?’

She jumped, hard, at the sound of a voice behind her.

It was Joy.

‘Yes. God. Sorry. You made me jump. I was just looking for something.’

‘That’s OK! No problem! Just come through when you’re ready.’

‘Thank you, Joy.’

She turned back to Michael’s desk and moved the mouse of his computer. The screen came to life: a photo of Michael on the back of a speedboat, a young woman under each arm, a bottle of champagne in the foreground of the shot in a silver bucket. Rachel had no idea who the girls in the picture were, or when it had been taken, but Michael was clean-shaven in it, so she assumed it had been taken before he met her. She tried his birth date for the passcode, but it failed. She tried it backwards, but it didn’t work. Then her eye went to the stupid car parked in the driveway, with its stupid personalised number plate: MR74.

On her fingers she counted up his initials, then condensed them down to one-digit numbers. A 4 and a 9. Then she added the 7 and the 4 and pressed enter. The screen opened up. Her heart galloped.

She clicked on his email and scanned the inbox with her eyes. And there it was, four days ago, PMX Wealth Management, entitledYour PMX: July Accounting Update. She opened it and pressed ‘Forward’, sent it to her own email address and then deleted it from the sent folder and from the trash folder. She closedthe email and went back to his inbox. Lots of ‘Thank you for your order’ type emails; clearly Michael had been shopping. Menswear. Wine. Books. Jewellery.

She felt her throat pulse with anger. Her father’s money funding this monster’s five-star lifestyle.

There were sub-folders on his email account, and she was about to click one open when she heard a man’s voice.

She shut down the email account, slipped her phone back in her pocket and quickly strode back towards the living room, just in time to see Michael descending the last stair.

‘Oh my God. Rachel! Wow! How wonderful! What are you doing here?’

The beard was gone, his face was smooth with afternoon sleep, and he had a very nice tan.

‘I was in town. Thought I’d finally check out the legendary “house in Antibes”! Not renting it out this summer, then?’

‘Er, no! No. I had a few bookings, but I cancelled them. So good to be back! Can you stay? Are you in a rush?’

‘I can stay, sure, for a few minutes. Why not?’

Joy had laid out crisps, salami slices, olives and salted crackers on a plate, with a jug of iced water and two cut-crystal tumblers.

‘Thanks, Joy,’ Michael called out towards a room behind the kitchen.

‘My pleasure, Mr Rimmer,’ came the disembodied response.

‘Is she here full-time? Like, a housekeeper?’

‘Yes. But not a live-in. Eight ’til eight, Monday to Saturday.’

‘Wow! Get you with staff!’ She said this in a tone filled with bitterness but was not surprised when he didn’t pick up on it.

‘Well, you know, it’s a different lifestyle here to London. It’s more—’

‘Expensive?’

He laughed. ‘Yeah. That’s not what I was going to say, but yeah.’