The Things We Do to Our Friends(80)

“Because of the Landores,” she repeated. She turned to Samuel sharply. “It’s why he left too. Although he knows more than me.”

He didn’t respond. Looked up at the house, letting her take center stage.

“Eve Landore is dead,” Imogen said.

Samuel let out something close to a moan.

“She killed herself,” Imogen finished, grimly.

I didn’t know what to say. I looked to the cliffs.

A body. I pictured it tumbling down the crags and falling into the sea where it would be ripped apart on the rocks. You might not even find her after the sea was finished.

“When?” I asked.

“Not long ago.”

“Why did no one tell me?”

“We kept it from you, Tabitha insisted on it,” Imogen said. “She did it on Boxing Day. She took a load of pills. Downed a bottle of wine. We knew things were getting out of control before then, though, when you came back and told us about what had happened with The Pig.”

Not what I had imagined. Eve Landore in her beautiful house with the marble floors polished like a gallery. I couldn’t reconcile that with a body lying there splayed out, vomit on the floor and speckling her lips. Glassy eyes.

The image was so messy, it just didn’t feel like her. But then again, we’d only met her once—that half hour I’d spent with her and all that research on her and her husband. None of it meant we knew them. All we had was a snapshot. We’d just gone in and stampeded through their lives.

It was tough to tell if Imogen was in any way sad about it. She shared this information with a certain haughtiness.

“We didn’t care whose lives we were fucking up. Children playing at being grown-ups, really,” Imogen said.

“I think we still are,” I replied.

She looked at me, amused. “Ummmm, no. You are. Anyway, that’s why I left. Fuck being involved in all that.” She switched to Samuel. “You left then too. They were your family friends, after all. You know more, do tell us.” Hand on hips, a glimpse of fussiness.

A pained smile from Samuel. “You don’t understand why she did it, do you?” he said to her. A bit of whatever was in his coffee cup dribbled down the side of his mouth. There was a robust aroma coming off him that the sea breeze couldn’t sweep away—sweet and musty, something unfashionable like brandy.

“You’re drunk,” I said.

He looked contrite. He flicked his tongue down over his chin and lips, loving how uncomfortable I was at the action—a small hint of the old Samuel.

Definitely drunk.

“There, there, Clarey. No need to be a spoilsport.”

“Don’t call me Clarey. So they told Eve Landore that he’d cheated on her?” I asked.

“Yes, but that wasn’t the problem. They told her what had happened, and it upset her, of course. Eve was pretty pragmatic, though. She spoke to Tom, and he said it had just been this silly flirtation. She could understand it. If anything, she was relieved it was all out in the open. A whole new beginning. But Tabitha wasn’t happy at all.”

Imogen let out a mirthless laugh. She was used to Tabitha being not happy.

“Why?” I asked. This was news to me. It had all gone well as far as I was concerned.

“Because she wanted Eve to leave him,” Samuel continued. “She couldn’t understand how she could stay with him. It was the first proper success, if you remember, the blueprint for the whole thing, and she’d planned that all these wives would leave their husbands. This is where the story gets crazy. Tabitha levels of crazy. She said that if Eve didn’t leave him, she’d tell his firm.”

“What was there to tell them?” I asked. “A few grainy photos of him kissing some woman?”

“Ah, but that’s the point, it wasn’t just some woman,” Samuel replied.

“What do you mean?”

“She was going to tell the world that you were fifteen. She was going to somehow engineer her fucking narrative so that he’d shagged a fifteen-year-old.”

“Why? And I didn’t sleep with him! Why would she do that?”

“I’ve told you. She couldn’t believe that Eve Landore was staying with him. She saw it as a betrayal of the whole thing. Absolutely going against the ethos of what we were trying to achieve. Anyway, she had this idea, she didn’t even run what she wanted to do past any of us. It was clever, she didn’t outright say you were underage. She implied it in so many ways. It’s hard to describe, but you can imagine.”

I could imagine that very easily. Remembered some of the strain in the group before Christmas at the Chinese restaurant. The absence of Samuel and Imogen afterward.

“I found out because Eve called me, she was just so upset,” he said.

“So why didn’t you tell her the truth?” I asked.

He looked at me like I was mad. “I couldn’t do that to Tabitha. Not then. I owe her so much. It all got out of control—you know what it’s like when you’re involved in something with her. I had no idea quite how far Tabs would push it all. Anyway, Eve didn’t see a way out. She didn’t want to leave him. To sell the house. You saw how she was about that bloody house.”

“Yes, I saw.”

He looked at me closer this time, like he was seeing me properly for the first time that day. “Remember how you saw Tom Landore at that ceilidh? Tabitha was absolutely shitting herself thinking that he’d said something to you, because that was right when it was all going down, when things were getting tricky.”