The Hike(40)

Cat’s tone sat somewhere between nostalgia and bitterness, and it was a timely reminder of why they were here. He felt his own tone harden. ‘She was a little bitch, Cat. But you don’t have to deal with her shit anymore. Neither do I. I know you don’t believe me, think it’s just me trying to butter you up, but I really do wish I’d dumped her the minute I realised she had a much hotter sister.’

‘We might never have got together anyway, but at least Paul would’ve survived his fate.’

He let go of her hand. ‘Don’t tell me you’re regretting getting rid of him? OK, so it didn’t happen like it was meant to and I get that you’re upset about that. But you told me he was bad news, Cat. I believed you, even though you’ve consistently refused to tell me what he actually did. I know it had something to do with him leaving work. You might as well tell me now.’ He reached for her hand again, softening his voice. ‘If you tell me, then I’ll be able to reassure you that we’ve done the right thing here.’

‘Have we though? What the hell are we doing, Tristan? We’re . . . we’re murderers.’ She stopped walking, and slid her hand out of his. ‘I can’t carry on with this. When we get back down there tomorrow, I’m going to the police and I’m telling them everything.’

Tristan snorted. ‘You really want to spend the rest of your life in prison? Do you actually have any idea what it’s like in those places?’ He paused. Lowered his voice further. ‘They’ll take your baby away, Cat. Our baby . . . I mean. I don’t even care who the father is. I can step up . . . I know you weren’t sleeping with Paul, so it can’t be his . . .’ There was no need to tell her that there was a good chance it wasn’t his own either. He didn’t really want to think about what that might mean.

‘I might not even be pregnant. Can we just get to the shelter? I’m so tired . . .’ Her sentence trailed off as she started to cry.

Christ, not again. All she’d done for at least half an hour after Ginny fell was to sit there and cry. Then she’d laughed, and he’d been confused, but put it down to shock. Of course she’d been going through a cascade of emotions while he’d climbed down the mountain on his ridiculous, fruitless, fake rescue mission. And her useless husband standing there doing nothing.

He sucked in a breath, trying to calm himself down. His thoughts were all over the place. For a moment he’d thought the same thing as Cat – that they needed to hand themselves in, tell the truth. How were they going to live with it? He knew their behaviour now was irrational. They’d killed their partners, widowed themselves, and yet they were talking about having babies and . . . He stopped his spiralling thoughts, blew out a long, slow breath, bookending the madness with air.

He’d come round to the idea of her being pregnant, though. Maybe it was the way forward for them both. If they could hold their nerve, get through the tough bits. Convince people they fell in love due to their combined grief – blah blah blah. They could fudge the dates. No one had to know. Or better still, they could just fuck off and start afresh. He could work anywhere, and so could she – not that money was an issue. He had plenty of savings – all left to Ginny if he died, but she was gone so that was no problem anymore. Plus Ginny’s money, of course. Ginny’s inherited trust fund that had triggered this whole little situation that they’d found themselves in.





Thirty-Four

SATURDAY NIGHT

He kept telling her that they were nearly there, but she was starting to feel delirious from it all, like she was having an out-of-body experience. There was the Cat in the woods, in the dark, blindly stumbling along the path. Bickering then making up. Wondering what the hell she was doing, then remembering why she was doing it. There was that Cat, and there was the other one, floating above, looking down. Watching this couple walk from one bad situation to the next, trying to convince each other that it was all going to be OK.

That Cat didn’t cry. The floating Cat was hard and emotionless, despite the shimmering, wisp-like quality. The floating Cat saw it from the outside. Like someone trying to make sense of it all. A police officer, a psychologist. One of their friends who just couldn’t get their head around what had happened. A journalist. A potential client who’d read it in the news. The floating Cat was all of these, and the mind of Cat – the one that connected the real one to the detached soul of Cat – the mind of Cat knew that they would have to deal with all of these people, these situations; and as in any situation like this – no matter how fool-proof, how watertight the story – there would be doubters. Like the ones who refused to believe that Amanda Knox was innocent. Like the ones who were convinced that the McCanns had killed their own daughter. There would be the internet conspiracy theory groups, full of people with too much time on their hands and too much glee in uncovering the gory details at the expense of the victims. These people would hound them and hound them, until they broke. Because in this case, the hounds would be right.

Tristan and Cat were cold-blooded killers.

She had to keep reminding herself why they needed to be.

They were still in darkness, the relative silence only punctuated by their own breathing and footsteps on the mulchy forest floor – plus the rustling and crackling and occasional hoots and scurrying that she was slowly becoming used to. But something had changed. The air was lighter, in some way. Less damp and cloying. And there was another sound – something that was very much like running water.