In a Dark, Dark Wood (32 page)

I wake, it’s dark, and my heart is racing in my chest.

For a minute I just lie there, feeling my heart thumping like a drum, trying to work out what has woken me. I can’t hear anything.

But then I turn my head and I notice two things.

The first is that outside the huge plate-glass window to the front of the house, is a dark shape that wasn’t there before. And I’m pretty certain it’s a car.

The second, is that I can hear a sound from the kitchen. It is a slow, juddering, scraping noise.

It’s the sound of a chair being pushed across the slate tiles as someone opens the door.

31

THERE IS SOMEONE
in the house.

I sit bolt upright, the throw falling from my shoulders, my heart thumping so high in my throat I feel sick.

For a minute I think about calling out, challenging the intruder. Then I realise I’m insane.

Whoever is here, for whatever reason they’ve come, it’s not a good one. It’s not the police. They wouldn’t come like this in the dead of night, creeping in through the back door. No, there’s only two possibilities: some random burglar has got lucky and discovered the open back door. Or the murderer is here.

I would
love
for it to be a burglar. Which says something about how fucked-up my life has become – that a random stranger breaking in here in the middle of the night would be the best possible explanation. But I know in my heart of hearts it’s not. The murderer is here. For me.

Very, very carefully, I get up, holding the throw around myself like a shield, as if the soft red wool can protect me.

My one comfort is that the intruder won’t want to put the lights on any more than I do. Maybe in the dark I can evade them, hide, escape.

Fuck. Where do I go?

The windows in here open onto the garden, but I’m sure they’re locked – I tried them from the outside, and I remember Flo locking them that last night. She had a key. I have no idea where it is.

I can hear them in the kitchen. They are walking softly across the tiles.

Two very strong impulses fight within me. The first is to run – run out the door, up the stairs, lock myself in the bathroom – do whatever I can to get away.

The second is to stand and fight.

I am a runner. This is what I do – I run. But sometimes you can’t run any more.

I stand, my fists clenched by my side, my blood a roaring in my ears, my breath a tearing in my throat. Flight or fight. Flight or fight. Flight or—

Shoes crunch on the glass in the hallway. And then they stop.

I know the murderer is there, listening – listening for me. I hold my breath.

And then the living-room door swings wide.

Someone is standing in the frame, and I cannot see who it is. In the dimness all I can see is a shape, black against the reflecting steel of the front door.

It could be anyone – they’re huddled in a coat, and their face is hidden by the shadows. But then the figure moves, and I see the glint of blonde hair.

‘Hello Flo,’ I say, my throat so tight I can barely speak.

And then she laughs.

She laughs and laughs, and for a long moment I have no idea why.

She moves, still smiling, into a strip of moonlight, her feet crunching on glass.

And I understand.

Because it’s not Flo.

It’s Clare.

She’s holding herself up against the wall, and I realise that she’s as frail as me. Maybe she wasn’t as ill as she pretended when I saw her in the hospital, but she’s ill all right. She holds herself like someone twice her age, like she’s been beaten bloody and has only half healed.

‘Why did you come back,’ she manages at last. ‘Why couldn’t you just leave it?’

‘Clare?’ I croak. It doesn’t make sense. Nothing makes sense.

She feels her way slowly to the sofa and then sinks down with a groan. In the thin, cloud-muted moonlight she looks awful – worse than me. Her face is cut and there’s a huge swollen bruise on one side of her forehead, black in the pale light.

‘Clare – why?’

I can’t make sense of this.

She says nothing. Nina’s rolling tobacco is on the table, along with Rizlas, and she reaches for them, painfully, with a little gasp of relief as she sinks back into the cushions, and begins slowly, painstakingly, to roll up. She is wearing gloves, but in spite of that her hands are shaking, and she spills the tobacco twice before she lights up.

‘I haven’t smoked in years.’ She puts the end to her lips and takes a long drag. ‘God, I’ve missed it.’

‘Why?’ I say again. ‘Why are you here?’

I still can’t make my brain accept what’s happening. Clare is here – therefore she must be the killer. But why,
how
? There was no way she could have sent that first text – she was the one person in the house who could not have done it.

I should be running. I should be cowering behind the sofa, armed with a bread knife. But I can’t make myself understand this. It’s Clare, my brain keeps insisting. She’s your friend. When she holds out the cigarette to me, I take it, half in a dream, and suck in the smoke, holding it deep until the trembling in my limbs stills and I feel my head get light.

I go to hand it back, and Clare shrugs.

‘Keep it. I can roll another. God it’s cold. Want a tea?’

‘Thanks,’ I say, still in this strange, dreamlike state. Clare is the killer. But she can’t be. I can’t seem to think what to do – and so I take refuge in these strange, automatic social responses.

She gets painfully to her feet and hobbles out into the kitchen, and in a few minutes I hear the click of the kettle and the bubbling hum as it begins to boil.

What should I do?

The roll-up has burnt out, and I set it gently onto the coffee table. There’s no ash tray, but I no longer care.

I shut my eyes, rub my hands over my face, and as I do I get a flash, like a projection against the inside of my lids: James, the blood bright as paint under the lights.

The smell from my dream is still sharp in my nostrils, his hoarse voice is inside my head.

There’s a small sound from the doorway and I see Clare shuffling painfully across with two mugs in her hand. She sets them down and I take one, and she lowers herself to the sofa and pulls a packet of pills from her pocket, and breaks two capsules into the tea, her fingers a little clumsy in their woollen gloves.

‘Painkillers?’ I ask, more for something to say. She nods.

‘Yes. You’re supposed to swallow the capsules whole, but I can’t swallow pills.’ She takes a swig and shudders. ‘Oh God, that’s disgusting. I’m not sure if it’s the pills or if the milk’s gone off.’

I take a gulp of my own. It tastes vile – tea always tastes vile, but this is even more vile than normal. It tastes sour and bitter below the sugar Clare has added – but at least it’s hot.

We sip in silence for a moment, and then I can’t keep quiet any longer.

‘What are you doing here, Clare? How did you get here?’

‘I drove Flo’s car. She lent it to my folks, and they left the keys in my locker for Flo to collect. Only … she never did.’

No. She never did. Because …

Clare looks up. Her eyes over the top of her cup are dilated in the dimness, and they shine. She is so beautiful – even like this, huddled in an old coat, with her face cut and bruised and no make-up on.

‘As for what I’m doing here, I could ask the same about you. What are
you
doing here?’

‘I came back to try to remember,’ I say.

‘And did you?’ her voice is light, as though we’re talking about what happened in an old episode of
Friends
.

‘Yes.’ I meet her eyes in the darkness. The mug is hot between my numb hands. ‘I remembered about the shell.’

‘What shell?’ Her face is blank, but there is something in her eyes …

‘The shell in your jacket. I found it, in the pocket of your coat.’

She is shaking her head, and suddenly I find I am angry, very, very angry.

‘Don’t fuck with me, Clare! It was your coat. I know it was. Why would you come back here if not?’

‘Maybe …’ she looks down at the mug and then up at me. ‘Maybe, to protect you from yourself?’

‘What the hell does that mean?’

‘You don’t remember what happened, do you?’

‘How do you know that?’

‘The nurses. They talk. Especially when you’re asleep – or might be.’

‘So? So what?’

‘You don’t remember what happened in the forest, do you? In the car?’

‘What the hell are you on about?’

‘You grabbed the wheel,’ she says softly. ‘You told me you couldn’t live without James, that you’d been fucked-up over him for ten years. You told me that you dreamed about him – that you’d never got over what happened, what he said to you in that text. You drove us off the road, Lee.’

For a second it washes over me like a wave. I feel my cheeks tingle with the shock, as if she’s slapped me – and then it recedes, and I’m left gasping.

Because it’s the truth. As she says it, I get a sharp, agonising flash – hands on the wheel, Clare fighting me like a demon, my nails in her skin.

‘Are you sure you’re remembering this right?’ she says, her voice very gentle. ‘I saw you, Lee. You had your hand on the barrel of the gun.
You
nudged it towards James.’

For a minute I can’t say anything. I’m sitting here, gasping, my hands gripping the tea cup like it’s a weapon. Then I am shaking my head.

‘No. No, no, no! Why are you here, in that case? Why aren’t you denouncing me to the police?’

‘How do you know,’ she says quietly, ‘that I haven’t already done that?’

Oh my God. I feel weak with horror. I take a long gulp of tea, my teeth chattering at the edge of the mug, and I try to think, try to gather the strands of all this together.

This is
not
true. Clare is screwing with my head. No sane person would be sitting here drinking tea with a woman who murdered her fiancé and tried to drive their car off the road.

‘The shell,’ I say doggedly. ‘The shell was in your coat.’

‘I have no idea what you’re talking about,’ she says, and there’s a catch in her voice. ‘Please, Lee, I love you. I’m scared for you. Whatever you’ve done—’

I can’t think. My head hurts. I feel so strange, and there’s a vile taste in my mouth. I take another gulp of tea to try to swill it away, but the taste only intensifies.

I shut my eyes and the picture of James swims in front of my closed lids, dying in my arms. Is this the picture that I’m going to see when I close my eyes for the rest of my life?

‘Text …’ he gasps, ‘text, Leo,’ and there is blood in his lungs.

And then suddenly, amid the swimming haze of memories and tangled suspicion – something catches.

I know what James was saying. What he was trying to say.

I put down the mug.

I know what happened. And I know why James had to die.

32

OH MY GOD
, I’ve been so stupid. I can’t believe how stupid – for ten years, I never even noticed. I sit there, stock still, running through all the what-ifs – how different everything could have been if I’d only realised what was sitting in front of my face, all those years ago.

‘Lee?’ Clare says. She is looking at me, her face the picture of concern. ‘Lee, are you OK? You look … you don’t look well.’

‘Nora. My name is Nora,’ I say hoarsely.

For ten years. For ten years that fucking text has been engraved on my heart, and I never even noticed.

‘Are you sure?’

‘“Lee”,’ I say to Clare. She takes a gulp of tea and stares at me over the mug, her beautiful, narrow brows drawn into a puzzled frown. ‘“Lee”,’ I repeat, ‘“I’m sorry but this is your problem, not mine. Deal with it. And don’t call me again. J.”’

‘What?’

‘“Lee.”’

‘What the hell are you on about?’

‘
Lee.
He never called me Lee. James never called me Lee.’

For a minute she stares at me in utter incomprehension – and I am reminded, all over again, what an amazing actress she was.
Is.
It shouldn’t have been James on the stage. It should have been Clare. She is amazing.

And then she sets down her tea and gives a rueful grimace. ‘Jesus. It was a long time ago, Lee.’

It’s not an admission – not quite. But I know her well enough to know that it might as well be. She’s not protesting any more.

‘Ten years. I’m slow,’ I say bitterly. Bitter, not just because my mistake ruined my own life, but because if I’d been a little quicker on the uptake, James might still be alive. ‘Why did you do it, Clare?’

She reaches out her hand to me, I flinch away, and she says, ‘Look, I’m not saying what I did was right – I was young and it was stupid. But, Lee, I did it for the best. You’d have been screwing up both your lives. Look, I went round to see him that afternoon – the guy was shitting himself – he wasn’t ready to be a dad. You weren’t ready to be a mum. But I knew between the two of you, neither of you would have the guts to take the decision.’

‘No,’ I say. My voice is shaking.

‘You wanted it to happen, both of you.’

‘No!’ It comes out like a sob.

‘You can deny it all you want,’ she says softly, ‘but you were the one that walked away, and he let you. All it would have taken was one text, one message, one call – the truth would have come out. But between you, you couldn’t even manage that. The fact is, he wanted out – he was just too much of a coward to make a break for it himself. I did it for the best.’

‘You’re lying,’ I say at last. My voice is hoarse and choked. ‘You don’t care – you never cared. You just wanted James – and I was in the way.’

I remember – I remember that day in the school hall, the hot sun streaming in through the tall glass windows, and Clare saying laconically, ‘I’m going to
have
James Cooper.’

But instead, he became mine.

‘He found out, didn’t he?’ I stare at her pale face, her draggled hair silver-white in the moonlight. ‘About the text. How?’

She sighs.

And then at last she speaks what sounds like the truth.

‘I told him.’

‘
What?
’