Behind Every Lie(44)

I stood slowly, utterly stunned. I glanced at Laura, who seemed blissfully ignorant of the news story.

Rose was dead. And somehow she’d made it look like Laura was too.

The reporter’s voice faded in and out. I stared out the window. An airplane roared overhead, the jet stream a haze in the pale afternoon sky.

I cast my mind back to her last words, an apology. Katherine, I’m so sorry.

The clouds shifted, a shaft of light pouring into the room, shining directly on Laura, her dark-red hair alight. I wanted to reach for that light, grasp it in my hand, bend it the way a wave of light is bent by gravity. If I could loop it back on itself and redo that day, none of this would be happening. Eva would be alive. So would Rose.

I could no longer contain it. I ran to the washroom and slammed the door shut as vomit burst up my throat. When I was empty, I sank to the floor and pushed my hands hard into my temples, rocking as I cried. The pain in my chest was dreadful, an excruciating throb of self-blame and recrimination.

Nobody would come looking for Laura now. Seb would think she and Rose were dead. Had that been Rose’s plan all along? To give Laura a fighting chance?

But then the truth hit me like a brick wall. Seb would come looking for me. How long before he realized my passport was gone? Before he sent one of his men after me or notified the police I was missing?

If he found me, he would find Laura. What had he said? An eye for an eye. I could not be certain he wouldn’t hurt her, and yet I had promised Rose I would keep her safe.

Gradually numbness seeped, like a drug, into my veins.

“Miss Katherine!” Laura’s voice brought me back to earth with a jolt. “Miss Katherine, I finished my picture!”

I wiped my eyes. I had to deal with this as I’d dealt with everything in life that came snapping at my back. Laura’s safety was my responsibility, my only priority, now.

Pulling the bathroom door open, I dropped to one knee in front of Laura, my eyes landing briefly on the envelope with my passport and Eva’s birth certificate sitting on the bedside table.

“Laura, today we are going on an airplane,” I said. “And we’re going to play a game. I shall call you Eva, and you must call me Mummy.”





twenty-two

eva




AFTER JACOB AND I got off the phone, I called all the hospitals in central London. I found David Ashford at St. Thomas’ near Westminster. It was too early to visit, so I decided to take a bath.

I turned the water on to fill the bathtub and peeled my clothes off to inspect my body. The bruises on my chest, my shoulders, my hips were fading, losing their defined edges. Even the fern-shaped edges of the Lichtenberg figures on my arm had blurred, the new skin a bubblegum pink, the electric vibrations muted.

When the tub was full I climbed in, tentatively lowering myself until I was covered to my chest. I stared at the ceiling; a cobweb with a fly trapped in the middle hung in the corner of the bathroom. Outside, the outline of a small bird hopped along the frosted-glass window.

The quiet flat folded around me, the water occasionally sloshing against the tub, intermittent drops from the faucet splashing into the water. Suddenly a sharp crack came from outside the bathroom door, then the thud of footsteps. I jumped, my eyes flipping open. I held my breath, straining to hear.

There. The unmistakable thud-thud of boots stuttered across the hardwood floor.

Someone was inside the flat.

A drawer scraped open, the silverware inside rattling. More drawers opened and closed. A floorboard groaned as footsteps came closer.

I leapt out of the bath, water cascading onto the linoleum. I flung the lock across the door. My heart thundered in my ears as I tried to squash rising panic. The walls loomed around me, a prison I couldn’t run from. Adrenaline surged through my blood so fast I felt dizzy. The horror of being confined, completely naked, overwhelmed me, sent me back to the night I was attacked.

There was nowhere to run. The bathroom window was a tiny slit at the top of the room, four or five inches tall at best. I was trapped.

Fear prickled along my skin. I gulped at the air, trying to think clearly. I pulled a towel from a hook on the back of the door and wrapped it around my body, scanning the bathroom for something to use as a weapon. The shower rod would make too much noise to get down; the toilet scrubber wasn’t lethal enough.

I dropped to my hands and knees and peered under the door. There was no sound. Everything had gone quiet. Too quiet. My pulse hammered in my ears.

Suddenly heavy black boots drew level with my nose, just on the other side of the bathroom door. I rocked back on my heels as the door handle rattled abruptly, a sudden image flashing in my mind.

A different apartment.

A different door handle.

A long corridor flashing as I ran past.

“Wait. Eva, don’t go!” A man’s voice.

And then I was outside racing past a sign for Vista Square Condos.

The bathroom door handle rattled again. The sound yanked me back to the present. I jumped to my feet, looking around wildly. My eyes fell on a bottle of bleach tucked neatly behind the toilet. I lunged for it.

In the bathroom mirror, my wet hair was slick against my skull, my face pale with terror. But there was something else there too: the glint of determination. Maybe I was trapped, but I wasn’t completely defenseless. I could move. I could fight.

I unscrewed the cap off the bleach, ready. But then the footsteps trailed away from the bathroom. A long moment of silence passed.