Her One Mistake(46)
“Your alibi’s fallen through?” Harriet repeated.
“Yes. Ken Harris,” he said, rubbing her shoulders. “You know what he’s like. You’ve said yourself the man forgets what day it is half the time.” Brian paused. “Well, now it seems he can’t actually remember seeing me the day Alice went missing.”
“I’ve never even met Ken Harris,” Harriet said slowly, watching Brian carefully for a reaction. When he didn’t give one she went on. “So what does that mean, that he can’t remember seeing you?”
“Nothing. Please don’t look at me like that, Harriet. You know I’m telling the truth. I wouldn’t lie about where I was.”
Harriet chewed on her lip, unsure what to say as Brian leaned in closer. “Harriet, I’m not lying; you know that, don’t you?” She could hear the desperation in his voice, feel the tremble in his hands, and see the beseeching way his eyes flickered over her. Harriet looked at Angela, who gave her nothing.
“I don’t know what to believe anymore, do I, Brian?” she said quietly.
? ? ?
TEN MINUTES LATER, while Brian was still in the kitchen with Angela, Harriet crouched beside her bed and peeled back the corner of the carpet. She reached under the loose floorboard for her notebook, tucked it under her top and crept into the bathroom, carefully stepping over Brian’s iPad that had strangely been left charging on the landing.
She locked the door and sat on the closed toilet, opening up the thick, deep gray Moleskine notebook that she had treated herself to on a trip to Wareham. Turning to the next clean sheet, Harriet pressed it flat with the heel of her hand. Then she pulled the silver pen out of the spine and started to write.
In meticulous detail she wrote down what had just happened. What Brian had actually said to her while Angela and the detective were in the yard, her husband’s promise to tell her eventually, his intent on forcing her to eat toast and honey. Then how he had calmly told Angela he’d already relayed the story of his lack of an alibi to her. When she’d finished, Harriet read through her notes and the discrepancies between what Brian said and what he tried to make her believe, until she was confident she knew the truth.
Before she closed the book she flicked through the pages that came before, ones that had become a lifeline to her since she’d started writing. Her first entry was dated May 18, 2016, almost twelve months ago.
The rest of the world may think she was losing her mind, and Brian might be trying to prove she was. But at least she’d found a small way of gripping tightly to reality.
? ? ?
THAT EVENING, WHILE Harriet ran herself a bath, she thought how Brian had been unnervingly calm. He seemed unfazed by the fact his alibi had fallen through, as he skittered around the house, tidying shelves, offering cups of tea, and casually flicking through an old copy of Angling Times.
She had run the bathwater so hot, it almost scalded her as she placed a foot in to test it, but Harriet couldn’t stand baths that turned cold soon after she’d gotten in. As the bubbles soaked around her, she closed her eyes and felt herself drifting into the state where she was almost falling asleep, when there was a shriek.
She jolted upright to find Brian standing in the doorway as her phone, attached to its charger, slipped off the side of the tub and into the water. Harriet screamed and jumped out in horror, standing naked on the mat.
“What were you doing?” Brian yelled.
She stared at him wide-eyed, her shivering body dripping water into a puddle around her feet. “I didn’t do anything,” she said. She’d never felt so exposed as she did then, the thought of lying naked in the bath while Brian had crept in.
He took a towel off the radiator and wrapped it around her so tightly she couldn’t move her arms. “You can kill yourself doing something stupid like that.”
“But I didn’t. My phone wasn’t even upstairs. I wasn’t charging it. I’d never pull it into the bathroom.” She tried to untangle herself from the towel, but with every movement he swaddled her tighter.
“So tell me what it’s doing here,” he said, pulling her against him as they heard Angela racing up the stairs.
“What’s happened?” she asked, looking from one to the other.
“Thankfully there’s no harm done,” Brian said as his eyes wandered to the bath where the phone lay sadly at the bottom, its cord still attached and snaking out of the door onto the landing. “Please just give me a minute to get my wife dressed,” he said, and Angela nodded, silently backing out of the room.
“You were lucky I got there in time,” he said, loud enough that Angela would hear. “I saw the phone plugged in and pulled it out of the socket before I found you in the bath.”
“I didn’t do it, Brian,” she said as he wrapped his arms tightly around her and led her onto the landing where Angela hovered.
“It was an accident,” he said, and she could have sworn she saw him furrowing his brow at Angela. “Thankfully everyone’s fine.”
“I saw your iPad charging. It wasn’t my phone.” Harriet looked over her shoulder, but there was no sign of Brian’s iPad. It wasn’t me, she mouthed at Angela, whose eyes flicked to the plug that had been pulled out of the socket just as Brian had said it was.
“If I hadn’t been here,” he said as they disappeared into the bedroom, pausing and shaking his head, “you’d be dead, my love.”