Lara? Jake and Lara? It wasn’t possible, was it?

  Edie called Lara’s number a dozen times. She left a dozen messages. Please call me. It’s urgent. Lara, I really need to speak to you. She racked her brain, trying to think of all the times she had seen Jake and Lara in the same room. There weren’t many. They had all met in town for a drink once. They ran a half-marathon together last year, and after that, Lara had come out to the house for dinner. They had all had much too much to drink. Jake had gone to bed early, leaving the two of them sitting outside, fighting off the midges. That was it.

  Wasn’t it? Edie thought about Jake’s moods in the few months before he died – his paranoia, that strange jealousy, his response when she said she’d got a text from Lara. Was that all some sort of twisted reaction? Maybe he was behaving strangely not because he didn’t trust her, but because he was feeling guilty.

  She slipped her favourite coat of Jake’s over her shoulders and, wrapping it tightly around her body, wandered miserably back through the house and into the kitchen. On the counter sat a clear plastic bag containing Jake’s laptop. The police still had his phone, but they had returned the laptop a couple of weeks back. Edie hadn’t even opened the bag. Now, as she looked at it, adrenaline started to move through her system once more.

  If there were any signs of an affair, they would be on the computer, not hidden away among phone bills and rejection letters from television networks. If she really wanted to know what was going on in Jake’s life towards the end, the computer would be the place to look. The question was, did she really want to know?

  After a few attempts, she figured out his password – the date of their wedding. Ironic that he would choose that date, when they had exchanged vows, to hide signs of a mistress.

  But if there were any signs, Edie couldn’t find them. There was nothing in his emails – no messages to or from Lara, or any other mystery woman, for that matter.

  Edie opened his work folder, skimmed through his ideas for series, his half-written pitches for television networks. In a folder titled ‘PICS’, she found scans of their wedding photographs. There were also pictures taken on a holiday in Italy with Ryan a few years ago, and some of picnics in the park near their old place in London.

  In a sub-folder titled ‘PICS1’, she found a folder called ‘L’. Edie’s heart sank. Steeling herself for something seedy – pictures of Lara in her underwear or, worse, a video – she opened the folder. There were just two files inside. The first was a picture of Lara, but hardly a sexy one. It was Lara after she’d run the Edinburgh half-marathon last year, flanked by Edie and Jake – all three of them red-faced and sweaty, grinning for the camera.

  The second photograph wasn’t of Lara at all. It was an old school photograph of the athletics team. If you squinted hard you could make out Edie in the front row, her hair cut into a severe bowl. Behind her, in the second row, Ryan and Jake stood side by side, arms folded across their chests.

  Edie closed the file. She got up to put the kettle on, her mind racing all the while. Something was bothering her, something about that image. She went back to the computer and opened it again. She leaned forward and zoomed in to enlarge the image. There! In the front row, two or three faces down from where Edie sat, was a pretty, blue-eyed blonde. Louise.

  In her jeans pocket, her phone began to vibrate. She fished it out and looked at the screen. A text message, from an unknown number.

  HAVE YOU FIGURED IT OUT YET?

  And then another:

  WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?

  A jolt ran through Edie like an electric shock. She opened the first picture again. She looked from Lara, with her luscious dark hair, her green eyes, her toned arms, to blonde, curvy, blue-eyed Louise. No. It couldn’t be. There was a rushing sound in Edie’s ears. She felt as though she were falling. She stared at the picture of Lara, who had to go to London at least once a month because there was only one colourist she trusted with her hair. Lara who wore contact lenses. Lara who had once owned up, towards the end of an evening in the pub, that she’d been chubby as a teenager and had to work hard to look the way she did now. Lara and Louise, sitting side by side in a folder that Jake had created and named ‘L’.

  Edie’s phone buzzed twice. She stared at it, almost too frightened to pick it up. There were two more messages from the unknown number. She clicked on the first one. It was an image. It took a second to download. Then she saw that it was the school photo again, but in this version Jake’s face had been crossed out. Ryan’s, too. The second was one sentence:

  There’s a special place in hell for women who don’t help other women.

  Edie dropped the phone as if scalded, and the moment it hit the table it started to ring, the vibrations causing it to spin. She backed away, too terrified to answer, cringing as an almighty crack of thunder shook the house. She reached out and picked up the phone, pressing it to her ear. She could hear breathing. But for a moment she wasn’t sure if it was on the other end of the line, or her own. Then a woman’s voice spoke:

  ‘So, have you figured it out yet? Come on, tell me! What happens next?’

  15

  The storm was raging. The wind was hurling handfuls of rain and sea spray at the windows of the house. From the stand of trees behind there came a howling, as though branches were bending to breaking point, as though trunks were being ripped from the earth.

  When the wind dropped for a moment, Edie spoke. ‘Louise?’ she said, pressing the phone against her ear. She walked quickly along the corridor, fear prickling her spine. She ran into the bedroom and climbed into bed, pulling the duvet over her. ‘Louise?’ she said again. ‘Is that you?’

  ‘Call me Lara,’ the voice said. ‘I’ve not been Louise for twelve years. I changed my name after I was released from hospital.’ She paused. In the silence, Edie heard the click, hiss of a cigarette lighter. ‘I was ill. I don’t know if you knew that? Well, now you do, because I wrote about it in the story. I tried to kill myself, so I was sectioned.’

  She paused again. ‘Did you like the story?’ Lara’s voice was weirdly upbeat, as though she were enjoying herself. ‘I thought it was pretty good for a first attempt at fiction. Or would you call it non-fiction? Whatever. The earlier parts pretty much wrote themselves, but the bit I’m having trouble with is the ending. I was thinking you might be able to help out with that.’ She laughed, a brittle sound that sent a shiver along Edie’s spine.

  ‘What do you want, Lara?’

  ‘I want to get it right! I’ve been working on this for the best part of two years now. It’s been quite the labour of love.’

  ‘You’ve been planning it since we met?’

  ‘Since we reconnected. Before that, I was just getting on with my life, letting the past stay in the past. I’d had to deal with so much misery and so much hurt. But I’d got myself to a good place – setting up the business, moving to a new city, a place that wasn’t tainted with bad memories. And then, one day I go to meet my running club and there you are, like some demon who’s followed me up from hell. Edie Easton—’

  ‘Edie Pritchard.’

  ‘Yes, of course. Edie Pritchard, who married her childhood sweetheart. One of her childhood sweethearts.’

  ‘And so you decided to take him away from me?’ Edie’s voice cracked.

  ‘Not right away,’ Lara said. ‘At first, I was too taken aback. That first time I met you at the running club, I just kept waiting for the penny to drop. I kept waiting to see surprise in your eyes, shame in your face, but it never came. You just looked right through me. You stood there, smiling your dumb smile …’

  On the line, Edie heard a rumbling sound, like a train passing, and Lara’s voice was lost for a moment. ‘You ruined my life and then you forgot all about me, didn’t you? And then, later, I met your husband, and he didn’t remember me either. It was like that whole thing had never happened, like Louise – that poor, naive, friendless girl – had never even existed. So I decided that maybe it was time to remind you.’

  ‘And so … you seduced him?’

  Lara laughed. ‘Oh, that got to you, didn’t it? That’s what’s bothering you! Not that I killed him, not that I bashed his brains out, but that I slept with him.’ That cruel laugh again. ‘You really are vain, aren’t you, Edie? Well, set your mind at rest. I didn’t sleep with him. I made him think that I might. But’ – she made a little sound of disgust – ‘he wasn’t exactly the most attractive prospect, was he? Broke, a failure, moping over his awful wife, who was about to run off with his best friend …’

  ‘Don’t you dare talk about Jake like that, don’t you dare—’

  ‘Why, Edie? Why shouldn’t I call him a failure? It’s what you called him, isn’t it?’

  Edie winced. ‘I was not about to run off. I would never have left Jake.’

  ‘What are you talking about? You already had left him!’

  ‘It wasn’t for ever. We were just going through a bad patch. I would have gone back …’

  ‘Because you loved him so much, or because Ryan wouldn’t have you?’ Lara asked. ‘I’m not sure Jake would have had you back anyway. Do you know, when I planted the seed in Jake’s mind – about you and Ryan – I expected to have to work a little harder. But he believed everything. When I told him you hardly ever turned up for running, Jake believed it. When I told him you talked about Ryan all the time, he believed that too. Every horrible thing I said about you, he lapped it up. I was never sure why he didn’t try to defend you. Was it because he didn’t love you? Or because he felt so guilty about what you and he had done to me?’

  For an instant, a flash of lightning lit up the sea. Edie shrank down under her duvet. ‘Are you saying Jake worked it out? Are you saying he knew who you were?’

  ‘He was never quite so blinkered as you, was he? After that half-marathon last year, do you remember, I came out to the house? We were drinking wine outside and there were all those midges. You went inside to get some spray, and I caught him staring at me. I thought he was about to make a pass. But then, there it was – this look of horror on his face. Horror and shame. Finally! He WhatsApped me a couple of days later, saying he wanted to talk. We met in the Balmoral bar. He sat there, drinking and sunk in self-pity, begging forgiveness …’

  ‘I don’t believe this!’ Edie suddenly found herself shouting into the dark. ‘I don’t! Jake did not rape you, Lara …’

  ‘No,’ Lara said, her voice low and hoarse now, like the voice in the story. ‘You’re right. Jake didn’t rape me. But he was in the room when Ryan did.’

  There was a strange noise on the line, a hissing sound, and then the phone went dead.

  16

  Edie had a swooping, sinking feeling in her stomach. She cringed, squeezing her eyes tightly shut. In her mind’s eye, she saw a camera. She heard Ryan’s voice, softly pleading with her. Louise is saying we attacked her, we did stuff to her. We could be in real trouble. She saw Jake, turning his face away from her.

  They were all drunk. Before they even got to the party, they’d been drinking. Edie had nicked a bottle of vodka from her parents’ drinks cupboard. And they were drinking it in the TV room, all three of them squeezed on to the sofa, watching music videos.

  Ryan, who was messing around with the camera he’d been given for his birthday, wanted to go to the party. Edie would have preferred the three of them to stay at Jake’s house. She and Jake had been going out for two months now. It was new and exciting, but nothing was as exciting as the feeling she got when she caught Ryan watching them. Watching her. But Ryan definitely wanted to go to the party, and Edie didn’t want to be a downer – or worse, get left behind. So off they went, weaving along the dark lanes on their bikes. Jake almost crashed into a ditch at one point. She and Ryan laughed at him, calling him a lightweight.

  The party was being thrown by someone in her year, someone with money whose parents were away. When they arrived, everyone ignored them. Everyone except for Povvo, who came bouncing up right away, bra-less in her white T-shirt, thrusting herself at Ryan. Edie remembered that part clearly. How Ryan smiled at Louise. How he laughed with her. How he offered her a swig from the bottle Edie had brought. How she pressed her pink lips against the bottle rim. She watched Louise and Ryan. She felt Jake watching her, and she felt that the whole evening was soured. She wanted to go home. She walked off towards the kitchen, leaving the boys with Louise. She glanced back over her shoulder to see whether one or the other would follow her. Neither did.

  Later, after an agonizing hour of standing with her back pressed to the kitchen wall, hoping for someone – anyone – to talk to her, Edie went back to find the boys. She walked through the living room, and from there to a study. From there she saw them, through the window, out on the lawn. She thought for a moment they were going home, leaving her behind, and she hurried out through the French doors on to a terrace.

  Now she could hear them shouting at each other, she realized they were arguing. She felt a sharp sting of adrenaline: something was happening, something exciting. She saw Ryan grab hold of Jake’s jacket collar, saw Jake wrestle himself away. She was trying to hear what they were saying to each other, but there was something else, another noise. She turned and saw a girl sitting on the floor, in the corner of the verandah, skirt hitched up to her hips, knickers showing, sobbing as though her heart would break. Edie took a step towards her and the girl looked up. It was Louise, her big blue eyes filled with tears, mascara streaking her pretty face. Edie turned away. She watched as Jake grabbed Ryan’s camera from his hands and hurled it to the ground.

  Edie’s phone was ringing again. ‘I thought I’d lost you,’ Lara said when she answered.

  ‘I didn’t know,’ Edie said, ‘what happened at the party. How could I? I wasn’t there. I wasn’t in the room when … whatever it is you say happened …’

  ‘But you said that you did know what happened. Or rather, you said you knew that nothing happened, because they were never alone with me. You lied.’

  ‘I couldn’t know for sure …’ Edie was interrupted by a blinding flash, a fork of lightning striking alarmingly close. She gasped in fright. On the line, Lara did too. And then there came an almighty crash of thunder, a boom to shake the whole house. And Edie realized that she had not only heard it in the room, she had heard it on the phone.

  She looked up. Through the darkness she could just make out the shape of the curtain, billowing as though caught by the wind. She heard the sound of the waves crashing against the cliff outside. She suddenly felt very cold, and sensed that it was not just fear chilling her to the bone. It was a bitter blast of cold air. Someone had opened the door.

  Someone was in the house.

  Lightheaded with terror, phone clutched tightly in her hand, she began to move towards the bedroom door. She pushed it open and peered along the corridor. Around her, the darkness thickened, solid and dense.

  ‘Lara?’ she called out. ‘Is that you?’ The sound of fear in her own voice made her more frightened still. She inched a little further forward, feeling her way along the corridor. ‘I know you’re here.’

  When she reached the doorway to the living room, she could see that there was a puddle of water on the floor in front of the sliding doors where the rain was coming in. Stifling a sob, she started to dial the police. She was on the second nine when she felt something in the air change – someone lunged at her, a shadow. She lurched backwards, but she was too late; the intruder was upon her, grabbing her arm and wrenching it behind her. Edie screamed as she dropped the phone. She felt something hit her on the back of her head, and she fell to her knees, crying out in pain.

  17

  The pain in Edie’s head was unlike anything she’d ever felt before, sharp and intense at the back of her skull, blooming at the front into a tight, throbbing sensation. It was as though someone had placed a vice around her temples and was turning the screw. Her shoulder felt as if it had been wrenched out of its socket. She tried to move to ease the pain, but found that her hands were tied behind her back. When she raised her head, she saw her own face reflected back at her, her eyes black against the pallor of her cheeks.

  The light was on. She was sitting on one of the dining-room chairs, facing the sliding doors, which were now closed. Slowly, she turned her head this way and that, but she couldn’t see anyone. She couldn’t hear anyone either, and the storm seemed to have died down. The only sound in the room was her own ragged breathing.

  Then, from behind her, something else. A yawn.

  ‘Are you awake?’ Edie heard the click of heels on the concrete floor. ‘You’ve been out for a while. I thought I was going to have to shake you.’ From the edge of her vision, a shape appeared. Lara. She crouched down at Edie’s side so that their eyes were level. ‘How are you feeling?’ she asked, wrinkling her nose. ‘You look terrible. Would you like some water?’

  Without waiting for an answer, Lara stood up and clacked off into the kitchen. Edie heard the tap turning on and off, and a moment later Lara stood in front of her, pressing the cool glass against her lips. Edie sipped and swallowed. A little of the water ran down her chin.

  Lara scraped a chair across the floor and placed it in front of Edie’s. She sat, rolling her shoulders back as she did, tipping her head from one side to the other as though she were warming up for a run. Or for a fight. She glanced back over her shoulder. ‘Storm’s blown itself out, I think.’ Edie said nothing. She closed her eyes against the light. ‘Funny how we ended up here, isn’t it?’

  ‘What? You mean with me tied to a chair?’

  Lara chuckled. ‘No, I mean up here. In Scotland. A long way from sunny Sussex.’ Edie heard a familiar click and a hiss and she opened her eyes. Lara was lighting a cigarette. She smiled at Edie. ‘You don’t mind, do you?’ Edie glared in response. ‘Why did you come here anyway?’

 

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