In a Dark, Dark Wood(88)

Did James ever really know her? Or did he just love some illusion of Clare, an act that she presented to him? Because I know, from twenty years of knowing Clare, that his plan was never going to work. Hell would freeze over before Clare would admit to something like that. Not just because she would be in the wrong to me – but because she would be in the wrong to everyone, for ever. I could not be expected to keep quiet about what happened – it would have all come out: ten years of lying and deception and, most humiliating of all, the fact that Clare Cavendish had had to resort to this to get her man.

She must have known, too, that James’s decision was on a knife-edge. I don’t know what he said to Matt, but it was clear that if he was prepared to talk about his distress to other people, it must go very deep indeed. And he’d made no promises to Clare – only said that he might be able to forgive her if she confessed.

I didn’t think, knowing James, that he would have succeeded.

No. Clare had everything to lose by being honest, and nothing to gain.

She had two options: tell the truth, and expose herself, or refuse to go along with James’s plan, and lose her fiancé – and then the truth would have had to come out anyway. Either way, she would be destroyed, and the image she had built up so carefully over so many years – the image of a good friend, a loving girlfriend, and a caring, honourable person – would be shattered.

I know how hard it is to walk away from your past and start again – and Clare’s life is happy and glittering and successful. She must have looked at all she’d done, and built and won, and balanced that against a lie.

She could come out of this destroyed – or she could kill James and walk away a tragic and inspiringly brave widow, ready to start again.

James had to die – his execution was regretful but necessary.

But mine – mine is a punishment. It was not enough that James die. Someone must carry the can for his death. It cannot possibly be Clare’s fault, even as an accident.

No, someone else must be to blame. And this time, that someone is me.

Why me? I almost say. But I don’t. Because I know.

I stole her man. Ten years ago I came between Clare Cavendish and her rightful property, stealing him out from under her nose while she was too ill to fight for what was hers, and now I have done it again, rising up from the past like a hand from the grave, to come between her and James one last time.

I will not leave this house now, I know that.

Clare cannot afford to let me leave.

My heart is beating very, very hard in my chest, so hard that I feel strange and light-headed, as if I might fall. I stand up, unsteadily, holding my cup, and I stagger and drop it. Clare reaches for it, trying to grab it before it spills, but her gloved fingers fumble on the china, and the cup slips from between her fingers and skitters across the coffee table.

And as the dregs spill out across the glass top I see … I see the white residue at the bottom of the cup. Not sugar – that had all dissolved. But something else. Something that made the tea taste even worse than usual.

I understand now. I understand my light-headedness. I understand why Clare has said so much, has allowed me to get this far. And I understand, oh God, I understand the gloves.

She looks down at the cup, and then up at me.

‘Oops,’ she says. And then she smiles.





33


FOR A MOMENT I do nothing. I just stand there staring stupidly at the cup, feeling the lethargy in my arms and legs, and the swirling confusion in my head that prevented me from noticing the effects of the drug before. What are they? Painkillers? Sleeping pills?

I stand there, swaying, trying to get myself together. Trying to balance.

And then I stumble towards the door.

I am not quick. I am slow – nightmarishly slow.

But as Clare leaps towards me, her battered limbs don’t quite obey. Her foot catches in the rug and she comes crashing down, her hip smacking into the wickedly sharp edge of the coffee table. She gives a scream that sets the echoes in the hallway ringing, and makes my already spinning head feel even stranger – and I stagger into the hallway.

I am struggling with the lock of the front door – the lock that seemed so simple and straightforward just a couple of hours ago. My fingers are slipping – the lock won’t turn – and then I have done it, and I am out, snapping through the flimsy police tape into the blessedly cold, fresh air.

My limbs feel like rubber and my head is sick and dizzy.

But this is what I do. I run. I can do this.

I take a step. And then another. And another and another. And then the forest swallows me up.

It is incredibly, indescribably dark. But I cannot stop.

The air is cold in my face and the shapes of the trees are black against black. They rear out of the chilly dark and I dodge and weave, ducking under branches, my hands held out to protect my face.

Bracken and brambles catch at my shins, ripping at the skin, but my legs are numb and cold and I hardly feel the slashes, only the tearing thorns holding me back.

It is my nightmare. Only this time it’s not James I’m trying to save – it’s myself.

Behind me I hear the slam of a car door, and an engine revving. Full-beam headlights glimmer through the tree trunks, sweeping round in a great curve as the car does a slow U-turn and then begins to bump down the rutted drive.

The drive goes round in long curves, so as not to climb the hill too steeply. The woodland footpath is direct. If I run fast, I can do this. I can get to the road before Clare. And then what?