The Last Wife

by Karen Hamilton

  I walk back in the direction of the woods. Go or stay? Stay or go?

  Camilla’s fear of violence comes to mind. It’s one thing encountering someone in a civilized environment, like our book group, quite another out here in the comparative wilderness. I tease out a branch from the random kids’ makeshift den, taking time to make my selection, like playing Jenga.

  A mistake. The whole structure tumbles down, echoing loudly. Afterward, silence. No one but me was disturbed by the noise. I come to a decision. Taking the branch with me as a protection (if need be), I’ll make one final attempt to talk to him. If that fails, well, so be it.

  The wind picks up slightly again; I hope Greg packed his winter woollies. He has been fast, efficient and has wasted no time in my brief absence. He’s comfortably sitting down as if he’s drinking in the view, exuding an air of calm and contentment. He hasn’t set up a rod yet; he must be taking a breather.

  “Hey, Greg!” I call out.

  “What are you doing here?” he asks as I approach.

  “I wanted a chat in private.”

  “There’s a surprise.”

  “Please listen to me, Greg. My baby is related to Nina’s children, he’s their half brother. Please don’t humiliate her memory in public. For my sake and Jack’s, if not hers. I understand that you’re angry.”

  He shrugs. “Marie, I don’t have anything against you personally, but I’ll do whatever I feel is right. Please don’t tell me that you came all the way out here just to try to make me change my mind? I’m a man of my word.”

  “Can we at least talk a bit more?”

  He shrugs, as if my feelings are inconsequential, and picks up a rod. He points to the branch I’d almost forgotten I was still clutching.

  “Planning on tying a piece of string to the end of that and joining me in a spot of fishing?” he says, as if he thinks it is some sort of suitable response.

  He sits down on his stool again, picks up his rod all the while chuckling—actually laughing to himself—as if my feelings and fears are inconsequential.

  I don’t know at what point I make the decision, or if I ever actually consciously do, because something possesses me, propels me forward. A rush of rage floods as I recall all the hours of angst, and each terrifying moment hurtles back in short, sharp, brutally clear images. I rerun through all the fear he’s caused and all that he can make me lose.

  I’m convinced that I must’ve have gained Nina’s strength, too, because I lift the branch up above my head.

  He swings round and looks up at me, his expression a picture of uncomprehending horror as he topples to the side when the branch strikes his right cheek. The fallen camping stool lands and rests against his calves. A pair of small, black binoculars drops into the water with a plop.

  Greg doesn’t reach out for them—he doesn’t do anything. He just lies there, silent. His face is tilted away from me. I lean over slightly to examine him closer. I force myself to look, to see if he’s hit his head on something, but there is no obvious rock or stone and without me moving him to check, I can’t tell.

  Oh my God. This isn’t right. Yes, I’m angry but I only wanted to give him a fright and perhaps demonstrate how desperate and helpless I’m feeling. Of course, there’s no way he could have appreciated just how much I’ve been through to have a child of my own and attain the family life I now have.

  My legs start shaking uncontrollably; I fear I might collapse. Jack is a young, helpless baby. I’ve wanted him for so long. What if I’m arrested? Sent to prison? I couldn’t bear being separated from Jack. Stupid, I’ve been so stupid.

  “Greg! Greg! Get up! You’re giving me a fright. I’m sorry.”

  A slight breeze rushes through the trees. I wait. Nothing happens. Greg does not get up. I don’t know what to do. I just wanted to make him understand what lengths he’d driven me to. A small plane flies overhead. Greg’s face is mere inches from the water’s edge. I gently nudge his head slightly forward with the branch. Water snakes past, lapping the bank, splashing his face.

  I’m going to have to get help and explain that it was all an accident.

  Something grabs my foot. I scream and drop the branch. Greg is holding on to my right ankle, it is unsteadying. He turns and stares at me.

  I can’t stand it, I can’t cope with it, I have to make him stop. It’s freaky, like dead, staring fish eyes, and he won’t let go. He sits up. With his free hand, he reaches over and I see him pick up a serrated knife from his fishing box. I kick his arm. He drops the knife and tries to grab it. I lunge for it with my free hand and pick it up to threaten him, but he grabs my other foot, the knife is pulled from my grip and a pain rips through my recently healed cesarean scar.

  As I fall back, Greg sits up. My pain vanishes as I focus on his eyes—he’s staring, but unfocused, as though he can’t recognize me. His right arm lifts, still clutching the knife as he leans toward me. I roll over onto my side to pull myself up, but no sooner am I on my knees, I feel hands around my calves as Greg pulls me toward him.

  “Let me go!” I twist around to kick him but my aim is completely off. “Greg, it’s me, Marie! What are you doing?”

  I reach for a large stone, grab it and throw as hard as I can. It hits the side of his head with a dull thud. His eyes bulge and—still—they stare at me but his arm drops and the knife slides to the ground. Thank God!

  “Greg!” I say.

  It’s the wrong thing to do, it snaps him out of his trance and he lunges forward, his hands grasp my neck. I can’t speak. I grab his fingers—they slacken as I pull them off. I scream. I see someone else... Camilla!

  Greg turns around. Camilla picks up the knife as I back farther away. At first, I think she’s going to throw it in the river and try to run away with me, but a look of utter rage twists her features, her jaw clenches and she grits her teeth. Camilla raises the knife and aims for Greg’s throat. She stabs. He slumps back onto the bank, the knife sticking out. She clasps it tightly with her right hand as if she’s trying to yank it out, to have a fresh go.

  “Stop!”

  We both stare as blood oozes onto the soil. A horrible, gasping sound fills my ears. Oh God. It’s horrible. His eyes! I can’t look at his eyes anymore. One hand is slumped on his chest as if he was going to try to pull the knife out himself, but gave up.

  “What are you doing?” I yell.

  Camilla’s words tumble out as she struggles to catch her breath. “I couldn’t let you come here alone. Louise went to a friend’s for tea, you took so long, I was afraid, I saw you, and him...”

  We both stand and stare. Birds flutter in the branches, making us both jump. Camilla bends down and picks up the large stone as if she thinks Greg (or someone) is going to attack her. I hold my breath as she holds it above him. There is silence and stillness apart from the running water and a breeze in the trees. She throws the stone into the river.

  “We don’t have long,” she says.

  I still expect Greg to sit back up, splutter, come after us, do something. Nothing. Through the flowing water, I see green moss being tugged downstream, dancing in the current. Stones and debris rest on the sandy bottom. It’s...mesmerizingly beautiful.

  I pick up the fallen branch and chuck it into the water, watching it float away as innocently as a Pooh stick.

  I wish I’d watched more true crime. There’s something more we should be doing to cover our tracks, I know there is. Theft.

  “We have to steal something,” I say out loud.

  Camilla ignores me, remains standing still, eyes wide, staring at Greg. She’s looking at him in hatred, not fear. I grab her by the shoulders and give her a shake.

  “Steal something! We’ve got to take something.”

  We both look around.

  “His wallet?” she says.

  I don’t want to go through his pockets because I’ll be
sick—I can’t touch him. It comes to me: his camera. It’s easy to find, just inside the entrance to his tent. I shove it in my backpack and we both turn and walk away as fast as we dare.

  The pain in my abdomen is gnawing, viselike.

  Camilla stops. “The knife!”

  I look down at her bare hands, half expecting to see them covered in blood.

  “You’ll have to go back and get it,” I say.

  “I don’t want to.”

  “You have to. I’m not.”

  I bend over and clutch my stomach as I wait.

  * * *

  Halfway back, there is a rushing noise in my ears. I stop to be sick, but nothing comes up.

  As we approach the guesthouse, I can’t stop shivering. I’ve read so many stories where this type of thing happens, just one mistake, one wrong turn, and a whole life, or lives, can be completely upended. It can’t be happening to me. I won’t let it.

  We go in through the back door.

  I pull off Nina’s old wellies. They were too big anyway, I must destroy these, get some new ones of my own, the right size next time. It’s funny how, despite the trauma, my mind is quick to figure out ways to self-preserve.

  Still, I throw up into the sink.

  Camilla puts the kettle on. My teeth chatter. She gets a throw off the sofa and wraps it around both of us. We both sit there, shivering.

  I force myself to look at my scar. It doesn’t look split, but the pain remains.

  “It was the lesser of two evils,” says Camilla. “We had no choice. He was threatening us. He was going to destroy me, Louise, damage Nina’s memory for Felix and Emily. He grabbed the knife, not you. It was self-defense, Marie. I had to save you.”

  “It was history repeating itself.”

  Everything I found so abhorrent about Charlie’s death, I’ve mimicked.

  “Where’s the knife?” I ask.

  “In my bag.”

  “Get rid of it!”

  “Where?”

  “I don’t know.” My mind is all over the place. I don’t want to know. “Somewhere not overlooked by CCTV. I’ll wait here, be your alibi, but don’t take forever. Disguised in something in a public bin? Water? One of the lakes, maybe?”

  My silence is now in exchange for Camilla’s, and vice versa. We’ve formed an irreversible, macabre bond. Yet, perversely, I believe that Nina would approve of us becoming—if not exactly friends—then companions or partners in crime, at last.

  Forty

  I awaken to Jack’s cries, the shouts of the elder two fighting over something—I can’t ascertain what—and the reality of yesterday’s horror. Rain, so heavy it sounds like hail, hits the windows. My abdomen aches. My head throbs. My stomach is a ball of pure dread. The doorbell rings and I rush to the toilet to throw up. Nothing happens.

  I hear Stuart go downstairs. I stand by the bedroom door, listening. I wait, anticipating the thump of police boots on the stairs. It’s our online grocery delivery. I’d forgotten all about it. I hear Stuart exchanging pleasantries with the driver. After several minutes, my breathing still hasn’t returned to normal but my legs stop shaking. I call the doctor’s surgery.

  * * *

  “How did you do it?” asks the GP as she rolls down some blue paper onto the examination bed.

  “I don’t know,” I say, clambering up. I lie down.

  “Does it hurt when I do this?” Prod.

  “No.”

  Another prod. “This?”

  “No.”

  There’s no permanent damage, thankfully. I’m prescribed painkillers and told to be careful.

  * * *

  Back home, there is no way I can take it easy. I go to Camilla’s. We sip hot chocolate and talk in polite code because Louise is in the room. It’s impossible to articulate what I really want to say, and Camilla clearly feels as agitated as me.

  “Lulu, sweetie, seeing as it’s such a rubbish day, why don’t you go and watch a movie in my room?” says Camilla. “As a one-off. You can even take your drink up with you.”

  We remain silent for several moments, even once we’re alone.

  “How did you manage to act so normally after Charlie died?” I say. “I remember you sitting by the pool in a pink sarong, sipping a cocktail as if nothing had happened. Like we’re doing now.”

  “We had no choice but to behave as normal or go down the confessional route. One or the other. We made a decision and stuck with it. Shock is numbing. It insulates you from the true horror.”

  Camilla is a cold fish. She would’ve stabbed Greg a second time. Maybe more, I’m convinced of it. Perhaps she was more furious at being dumped than she let on. Did she feel the same toward Charlie when she realized it wasn’t her he wanted, but me?

  “Why did it end with your partner in Canada?”

  It suddenly feels important that I know.

  “He met someone else. We had a lot of bust-ups, which got physical. I had to get away.”

  I feel cold, despite the second hot chocolate Camilla makes us.

  * * *

  I lie on the sofa back home with Jack in his chair beside me. Intermittently, he jerks awake before dozing off again. Felix and Emily watch Finding Nemo.

  After Camilla’s revelations, when I discovered that the money Nina had been putting away was for a charity dedicated to helping the families of people missing abroad, I’d felt—just for a moment—so utterly, pathetically, grateful that she’d cared enough about me. Stupid of me to react like that because of course, it never was about me. It was about her guilt.

  A memory resurfaces: Camilla lost her temper with an on/off boyfriend at art college. We were in the canteen one lunchtime and he wouldn’t immediately agree to the plans she was trying to make with him that night. She yanked the tray from his hands and dropped it. As we all stared at the congealed mess of food and the smashed white plate on the floor, she insisted it had been an accident. I can’t remember his name. Jake? Luke? They split up for good after that.

  I doze. Snagged to a rock is silky, emerald moss, which frames Greg’s face as he stares up at me, incomprehension and utter betrayal written all over his features. I run, but my body doesn’t move. I hear Jack screaming, but when I rush to his cot, it’s empty.

  I sit up so quickly that Felix and Emily gape. I must look frightening—my hair is all over the place and my hands are shaking.

  Jack is perfectly quiet. His little chest rises and falls. The elder two are absorbed in clownfish, shrimp and turtles. Everything is calm.

  Guilt festers, churning my insides, making me raw with fear and self-hatred. Every rattle of the letterbox, every ring of the doorbell, reinforces that I have no idea if I’m on borrowed time or not.

  * * *

  The news is delivered the following afternoon by Tamsin. Of course.

  Snippets of (mostly false) news filter through over the days, reminding me, yet again, of Charlie. News, old and new, intertwines.

  Back then it was the talk of the island. Apparently. There were various rumors when it was known that someone had drowned. It wasn’t clear initially whether it was a man or a woman.

  Now it is: He slipped and fell, an accident, a robbery gone wrong, an ex out to get him, a heart attack, a stroke, a branch fell from a tree and hit his head. Stabbed, brutally murdered.

  I listen to all the local discussions and dissections with an expression of No? How awful plastered to my face, when inside, my stomach is knotted in panic and my mind is full of remorse and fearful regret.

  Dreadful. Apparently he was alone. Wasn’t noticed for days because of bad weather. A tragic accident. Cowardly attack on a lone fisherman.

  Stuart doesn’t seem as upset or shocked as everyone else is.

  This seems harsh, despite him telling me that he didn’t like Greg.

  I keep repeating the words it
was an accident over and over until I believe them myself.

  Which it was, really, on my part. I wish I’d never gone to make him see sense. I wish I’d spoken up at the time.

  It’s amazing how many noises can sound like police sirens if you have a guilty conscience. Images of being cuffed, being guided into the back seat by a police officer, won’t leave me alone. I wouldn’t be tough like the characters I see in soaps, defiantly saying, “No comment.” I’d crack within the first five minutes and confess, probably even to crimes I didn’t commit.

  Every day I have a better understanding of Nina and how she must’ve felt. Strange, really, that I know her better after her death than when she was here. If she could be involved in murder, so it seems can I. The metamorphosis is complete.

  I donate the money Nina collected in Charlie’s memory to the charity of her choice. I tick it off my mental list of good things I must do to make amends, however small.

  Nothing helps take my mind off things for long. I go for endless walks in the forest with Jack and force myself to walk along the river, but never as far as the exact spot of Greg’s death. Guilt gnaws. Fear grows. My mind tosses around endless scenarios. I thank God for the heavy rains that followed; it must have helped destroy some evidence. I force myself to think of every worst possible outcome so that I can mentally prepare.

  I recall reading that it’s not just what you leave at a crime scene, it’s also what you can take away: mud, plants and seeds. The list could be endless. I throw away the gloves and hat I wore on the morning of on bin collection day, then wait and watch as our garbage is crushed in the truck. The backpack I used on that fateful day I wash many times and I use it regularly on outings with the kids so it’s filled with all kinds of crap.

  When I’m not tending to Jack or Goldie or the children, I finish Nina’s memory album with increased urgency. I have the photo evidence of Nina, Camilla and Charlie, hidden in plain sight, yet buried within the Ibizan pictures. It’s a part of Nina’s history—our history. It felt disingenuous to leave Charlie out, somehow, thinking about it. You’d have to know the story to realize that it’s incriminating.