Bring Me Back (B.A. Paris)(22)

‘Hmm,’ Tony muses. ‘Alright, leave it with me. I’ll go and see him this afternoon.’

‘Thanks, Tony, I really appreciate it.’ I feel bad sending him all the way to St Mary’s when I know that Thomas is in hospital. But I don’t want him to know I’ve been to the cottage. And it’s only a small detour; it won’t take him long to get to the hospital from St Mary’s.

I don’t feel like going home so I take a drive along the coast to the other side of Sidmouth, then park up and go for a walk along the beach, wishing I’d brought Peggy with me. When I’m tired of walking, I find a pub and sit nursing a beer, mulling everything over.

Tony finally phones at 5 p.m.

‘Tony,’ I say. ‘Did you manage to see Thomas?’

‘Bad news, I’m afraid. I went to St Mary’s only to find that Thomas was taken to hospital last week. Seems he had a nasty fall.’

‘I’m sorry you had a wasted journey.’

‘I only found out because, when he didn’t come to the door, I went down to the village shop. They told me he’d been taken to the Royal Devon and Exeter so I went straight there.’

‘And did you see him?’

‘No.’ He pauses. ‘It seems he died in the early hours of the morning.’

I feel a sudden guilt. ‘That’s so sad,’ I say. ‘I should have gone to see him, I promised I would.’

‘He’d been tending your garden. Full of flowers it was. I thought for a minute that you’d sold the cottage but they told me at the shop it was Thomas’ work.’

‘Now I feel doubly bad.’

‘Too late for regrets,’ he says, not because he wants me to feel even worse but because it’s the truth.

‘Well, thanks, Tony. I’m sorry to have troubled you.’

I hang up. All I can do now is find Rudolph Hill and draw him out. I’ll let him think that I believe he has Layla, that I believe she’s alive.

He’ll think he’s luring me, but it will be me doing the luring.





EIGHTEEN

Before

‘Who is he?’ I yelled as we sat in the car in the picnic area at Fonches, when you told me you’d slept with someone while you were in London. ‘Tell me who he is!’

You shook your head numbly, terrified by my anger. So was I, and I forced myself to swallow it down. It wasn’t you I was angry with anyway, I was angry with the bastard who had forced himself on you. I wanted to break every bone in his body, cut his balls off.

‘I’m not angry with you, Layla,’ I said, taking a breath. ‘I just want to know who it was.’

Your eyes wouldn’t meet mine. ‘I don’t know.’

I didn’t believe you but I let it go. ‘Can you tell me how it happened? Did he force himself on you? Did he hurt you?’ That was how dark my mind was – I wanted to believe you’d been raped rather than that you’d chosen to have sex.

You shook your head again and I took another breath. If he hadn’t forced himself on you, he must have taken advantage of you while you were drunk. I felt sick even thinking about it.

‘Alright.’ I looked encouragingly at you. ‘So you’d had too much to drink, is that it?’

Your eyes brimmed with tears. ‘No.’

‘But—’ I tried to work it out. ‘If you weren’t drunk, and you say that he didn’t force himself on you, how did it happen?’

Your eyes were pleading with me, begging me not to dig any further and as I watched the tears spill from your eyes, dread wormed its way into my heart. But still I couldn’t stop myself. I had to know, even though the truth was staring at me from your tear-streaked face.

‘Tell me, Layla. Tell me how it happened.’

‘I c-can’t.’

‘Why not?’

‘You wouldn’t understand.’

‘Try me.’

You bowed your head. ‘I wanted to know what it was like.’

I frowned, not understanding. ‘What it was like?’ My voice echoed hollowly around the car.

And then you told me. ‘Nobody forced me. I wanted to know what it would be like to have sex with someone else, that’s all.’

My mind was slow putting it together. Wanted to know what it was like. With someone else. It. Sex. You had slept with someone, a stranger, because you had wanted to know what sex was like with someone else. First Siobhan, now you.

I don’t remember much about what happened next. I know I leapt out of the car, tore round to your side, wrenched your door open and dragged you out. I remember shaking you, shouting at you. I remember your voice as you screamed at me to stop, I remember the fear in your eyes as I raised my arm. And then I remember being in the toilet block, trying desperately to control the terrible rage that had consumed me. And after – how long after, I don’t know – I remember going back to where I’d parked the car and finding you gone.

At first I thought that you were hiding from me, because I could remember dragging you out of the car and shaking you. But I couldn’t remember what had happened between the moment I had raised my arm, and finding myself in the toilet block. I started calling you, telling you I was sorry and when you didn’t come, I took a torch from the boot and went looking for you, terrified that I’d come across your body, that I’d killed you and hidden your body in the trees that circled the picnic area before blanking the whole thing from my memory. But I couldn’t find you, dead or alive.