Just My Luck(106)

‘My mum said it was unfair,’ Megan shrugged.

‘Your mum and my dad are taking ages with the shopping,’ I point out.

‘Most likely gone to the pub. I guess they have a lot to talk about. Or maybe my mum has had a call from the police station.’ Megan keeps her eyes on the ceiling. I slide my glance towards her. I’m so happy in this moment, bathed in friendship and an orange sunset, I don’t want to spoil things but since she’s brought it up …

‘It was you, wasn’t it?’

‘What was me?’

‘You were the person who gave me water and chocolate.’ The words stutter out of my mouth, like a faulty firework that you can’t trust because you don’t know when it will explode. ‘I think you tipped off my dad. Am I imagining this, Megan, or am I right?’

Megan doesn’t answer straight away. She takes a deep breath. ‘It was really fucking scary. Seeing you bleed like that. I thought you were going to die. I had to do something.’

‘So, you were there with your dad?’

I turn to Megan and she’s crying hard now. So many tears. ‘No, Emily. I was there with my mum. And your dad.’





51


Lexi


I can’t believe what I’m looking at and yet I can. Confirmation of my worst fears. No, more than that, confirmation of a betrayal I couldn’t ever have imagined. An email confirming two flights to Acapulco International Airport, Mexico. One way. Leaving tonight. Leaving in two hours.

I call Detective Inspector Owens and tell him what I’ve found.

‘You are quite sure?’

‘I’ll forward the email to you.’ I sound calm, dispassionate; the DI probably thinks I’m heartless. I am. My heart has been ripped out. It’s as though Jake has plunged his fist through my chest and grabbed my heart, gouged it out bloody and beating, stomped on it. Just as easily as someone might break a window. I am shattered.

The DI says he’ll alert the airport, get people there immediately. ‘They are probably at the gate. We can get the flight stopped.’

The doorbell rings. I have no idea who to expect. Not Jake. I hope it is Emily. I’ve texted her already, she confirmed she is at Megan’s, even though the app on my phone told me this, I needed to have her confirm it. I don’t want her alarmed but I have to keep her safe. I’ve told her to come straight home in an uber but I guess, even if she follows my instructions to the letter, she’ll be another half an hour.

It’s Jennifer.

I almost pity her. We were once so close. Ostensibly we were three legs of a stool, equally involved and committed to one another, but we both secretly knew Carla was the most glamorous, the most sexy. The most spoilt. We did occasionally allow ourselves a moment when we shared a look of envy as we noticed Carla’s long, smooth, tanned legs, or her new designer dress, new diamonds dropping discreetly from her earlobes. That’s why discovering Jake’s affair with Jennifer had been such a shock to me. I’d have had my money on Carla being the one he fancied. I guess because I was right in the end, I backed the right horse, I’m holding the winning ticket. It doesn’t feel like it. I feel like a loser.

‘Where’s Jake?’ Jennifer demands, crossing the threshold of my door, coming in uninvited.

‘Not here,’ I say simply and honestly.

She throws me a look of pity. I absorb it and wait for the moment I can spit it back at her. ‘Lexi, I’m sorry but it’s time you accepted the situation. I know you know that Jake and I are—’

‘What? What are you?’ I demand.

She colours, not a blush exactly, something closer to a flush of irritation. ‘We’re together.’ I raise my eyebrows but bite my tongue. ‘I’ve left Fred, and Jake is leaving you. We’re leaving tonight. It’s all arranged. You lost. I won.’

‘Where are you going?’ I ask.

‘I don’t want to discuss that with you.’

‘Mexico?’

She looks surprised but nods.

‘Wrong, Jennifer, you are not going to Mexico with my husband. Carla is.’ Understandably Jennifer looks confused. ‘He’s upgraded, apparently. Having money allows you to do that, doesn’t it?’

‘I, I don’t believe you,’ she stutters.

‘I’m sure you don’t, but I’m telling the truth. He played you as he played me. He played us all.’ Her mouth falls open. I can see her little pink tongue, a tongue she used to lick and suck my husband with. I feel strangely close to her but loathe her too. I remind myself she is not the worst. She had an affair with my husband, but Carla is worse. She had an affair with my husband and kidnapped my daughter to secure a ten-million-pound ransom.

And Jake? Jake is the vilest of them all.

How could he have plotted and hurt the way he most surely has? How could he have put his own daughter in such mortal danger? For money? For sex? ‘The police are on their way to the airport. They’ll arrest the two of them there. I think Patrick was in on it too. The kidnapping, that is. Not the affair. They double crossed him too. He’s already at the police station.’

Jennifer starts to tremble. And now I can throw back that look of pity she was in such a hurry to land on me. She starts to turn away from me, reaching for the door handle. She’s shaking too much to manage to grasp it, turn it and leave. I guess she is in a hurry to get home as quickly as she can, tear up the letter she left her husband. I wonder where she left her note. Possibly pinned on the fridge, maybe on the table in the hallway. The letter that says she’s sorry, she’s leaving him. That she has fallen in love with Jake and wants to start a new life. I am not heartless. I open the door for her, but I wonder when she gets back to her comfortable home in Great Chester, will her husband be waiting for her or will he already have left? Taken Ridley with him. I suppose I’ll find out if Fred requests his 2.976 million. I’ve put that aside in a separate account. It’s his, whenever he earns it.