In a Dark, Dark Wood(77)

Nina.

But my mind shies away from that, flinching from the idea. Nina can be odd; sharp and sarcastic and often thoughtless. But there’s no way she’d do something like that. Surely? I think of her face, set in stern lines like grief, as she remembered the gunshot wounds she’d treated in Colombia. She lives to help people. Surely she’d never do this?

But something is whispering in my ear, a little voice, reminding me of how callous Nina can be. I remember her saying once, very drunk, ‘Surgeons don’t care about people, not in a touchy-feely way. They’re like mechanics: they just want to cut them up, see how they work, dismantle them. Your average surgeon’s like a little boy who takes apart his dad’s watch to see how it works and then can’t get it back together. The more skilled you get, the better you get at reassembling the parts. But we always leave a scar.’

And I think, too, about her occasional shocking flashes of contempt for Clare. I think about her savagery that night when she talked about how Clare wanted to push and prod and get off on other people’s reactions, her bitterness about the way Clare outed her all those years ago. Is there something there, some reason she’s never forgiven Clare?

And finally, I think about her actions on the first night we arrived. The I Have Never game. I remember the deliberate malice of her drawling, I have never f*cked James Cooper.

Suddenly, in the over-heated little sauna of a room, I feel cold. Because that is the kind of cruel, personal spite that lies behind this whole crazy situation. It wasn’t just curiosity about me and James. It wasn’t thoughtlessness. It was deliberate cruelty – to me and to Clare. Who is pushing and prodding and getting off on people’s reactions now?

But I push that thought away. I will not think about Nina like this. I will not. This will send me mad if I let it.

Flo. Flo is the name I keep coming back to. Flo was there from the beginning. Flo invited the guests. Flo held the gun. Flo was the one who claimed it was loaded with blanks.

Flo – with her strange obsession with Clare. With her strange, unstable intensity. She could have found out about me and James at any point – she’s Clare’s best friend, after all, has been since university. What more likely than Clare confiding in her about James and me?

Is that why she’s taken an overdose? Has she realised what she’s done?

I am looking up, looking into space as I think all this out, and then suddenly my eyes focus on something, on a movement outside the door.

And I realise what it is.

The guard is back – the police guard at my door. Only this time I have absolutely zero doubt: they are not there to protect me. They are there to keep me in. I’m not going home when they discharge me, I’m going to a police station. I will be arrested, and questioned, and most likely charged if they think they can make this stick.

Coldly, dispassionately, I try to examine the last person at the hen night: the case against myself.

I was there. I could have sent those texts to James. I could have swapped the live round for the blanks. I had my hand on the gun when Flo fired. What could be more easy than nudging the barrel to ensure it was pointing at James as he came up the stairs?

And, more importantly, I was there at the second half of James’s murder. I was in the car when it drove off the road.

What the hell happened in that car? Why can’t I remember?

I think back to what Dr Miller said: Sometimes the brain suppresses events that we’re not quite ready to deal with. I suppose it’s a … coping mechanism, if you will.

What is it that my brain cannot cope with? Is it the truth?

I realise I’m shivering as if I’m cold, even though the heat of the hospital is as stifling as ever, and I pull Nina’s cardigan from the foot of the bed and huddle it round myself, breathing in her scent of fags and perfume, trying to steady myself.

It’s not the thought of being arrested and charged that has shocked me so much – I still don’t believe that will really happen. Surely, surely if I just explain everything they will believe me?

What has really knocked me off balance is this: someone hates me enough to do this. But who?

I don’t let myself think about the final possibility. It’s one too horrible for me to allow it into my mind, except in tiny niggling whispers when I’m thinking about other things.

But as I huddle down beneath the thin hospital blanket, Nina’s cardigan around my shoulders, one of those whispers comes: What if it’s true?

The rest of the day goes slowly, as if I’m moving through air made of treacle. It feels like the nightmares I sometimes have where my limbs are too heavy to move. Something is pursuing me, and I have to get away, but I’m stuck in mud, my legs are numb and slow, and all I can do is wade painfully through the dream, with the unspecified horror behind me getting closer and closer.

My little room feels more and more like a prison cell, with the narrow hatch of reinforced glass, and the guard outside the door.

If they release me, I know now what will happen. I will not be going home. I will be arrested, and taken to a police station, and then probably charged. The texts are enough evidence to hold me, along with the fact that I denied having sent them.

I remember, a long time ago, when I wrote my first book, speaking to a policeman about interviewing techniques. You listen, he said. You listen for the lie.

Lamarr and Roberts have found their lie: I told them I did not send those texts. And yet, there they are.