What do u want?
She knew the answer before the text even arrived.
Stay away from James. Leave us alone or I will tell him u killed his dad as revenge for the baby. If you go near him again I will tell police everything. I still have the key.
63
Evie
It won’t stop playing through her mind, a screaming reel of macabre images, her turning the key to the study, James Addlington Sr engulfed in flames. She doesn’t know how she’ll ever sleep again – not when she knew she was a murderer, even if she had never meant him to die.
She hadn’t shown her father the text messages – Evie couldn’t bear for him to think of her as anything less than his little girl. Telling him about the baby had been difficult enough. Telling him she was a murderer, saying the words out loud, well that would make it real. And after today she would go home to London and forget all this ever happened.
According to her father there had been whisperings already that the fire may have been started deliberately. Apparently James Addlington Sr was involved in everything from dodgy dealings to fraternisation with lonely housewives, blackmail and extortion, rumours that it seemed his family were desperate to play down. They had got away with it, he said.
‘Got away with what?’ Evie replied, her throat in her mouth. ‘I didn’t do anything.’
‘No,’ Dominic murmured. ‘No, of course not. But it wouldn’t look good for you to have been there, Evelyn. I’ve heard nothing to suggest anyone saw you – best if no one knows.’
It was as close to a warning as he’d come, and they had never mentioned her presence at the party again. Evie wondered, as Phillip drove her back to London, if her father truly believed that she’d had nothing to do with the fire, or if he now thought he was protecting his vengeful murderess daughter.
By one pm the day after the fire she was back in London.
64
Rebecca
When Evie had arrived back in London after her trip I’d expected her to be refreshed and ready to hit the party scene as hard as ever. Instead, the girl who came back to me was a shadow of the one who had left. It worried me so much that, after two days of her barely speaking, not leaving my apartment or answering the phone – I saw it ring several times and she just clicked ‘reject’ or let it ring until the answerphone kicked in – I decided to take drastic measures and call her father. It wasn’t difficult to get hold of her phone and write down his number – if she wasn’t asleep on my sofa she was staring at a black TV screen as though it held the meaning of life.
‘I’m just going to go and get us some food and we’re out of loo roll,’ I told her, kissing her on the forehead. She looked up at me and smiled, not a real smile but it was the most I’d had in two days.
‘Thanks, Becks, I really love you, you know? I just, I want you to know that.’
‘I know that, idiot,’ I said, ruffling her hair. ‘Will you be okay here?’
‘I’m fine,’ Evie’s eyes welled up with tears, stopping me in my tracks.
‘What is it, Evie, what’s wrong with you? Is it your mother? Ever since you got back from home you’ve been . . .’
‘I’m just exhausted,’ she replied, giving me a tired smile. ‘I don’t want anyone meeting me for the first time like this. Honestly, Becks, go and do your shopping, I’ll be fine. Love you.’
‘Love you too,’ I replied, dropping a kiss on the top of her head.
I waited until I was a good ten minutes away from the flat before I dialled Dominic Rousseau’s number. I knew she’d said that there had been a change in her plans and that she’d had to dash home because her mother was ill, but everything about it felt wrong. I’d been distracted at the time, I’d wanted to spend the weekend with Richard, but now, the way she was acting since arriving home – it wasn’t right.
So I did the only thing I could. With my heart thumping in my chest, I pressed ‘call’.
‘Hello?’
With Evie’s English being perfect and her accent barely noticable, I had almost forgotten that her father would sound so French. It threw me so much that when I didn’t reply for a couple of seconds he spoke again.
‘Hello? Bonjour? Who is this?’
‘Hello, Mr, I mean Monsieur Rousseau? My name’s Rebecca Thompson, I’m a friend of Evie’s.’
‘Is Evelyn okay?’ he asked instantly, his tone sharp.
‘She’s fine, I mean, she’s not fine, that’s why I’m calling you but she’s not hurt or anything,’ I cringed at how stupid I sounded, blathering like some kind of idiot. ‘Did something happen while she was away, do you know? I’m not trying to pry but she’s so different, I . . .’
There was a sigh at the other end of the line and I thought I heard Monsieur Rousseau swear quietly under his breath.
‘I knew I shouldn’t have let her go home. Has she said anything?’
‘Nothing,’ I replied. ‘She’s barely spoken, except to say that she’s tired. But I’ve seen her tired before and I know when something’s wrong.’
‘It’s very kind of you to call me, Rebecca, I’m glad Evelyn has a friend like you looking out for her. Are you with her now?’
‘God no,’ I said, ‘I dread to think . . . She’d go mad if she knew I was calling you. I just didn’t know what else to do.’
‘No, of course. I probably shouldn’t tell you this, Rebecca, if Evelyn hasn’t, but she had a break-up while she was at home, from a boy she was seeing before she left for London.’
I’ll admit, that threw me. Evie had talked about boys from home, but never one specific one, and she’d never let on that she’d still been seeing someone. True, she hadn’t been involved with anyone since I met her in Steve’s flat, but what was she doing sleeping with Steve if she was involved with someone back home anyway?
‘Oh, okay, well—’
‘Is there something else?’
‘Um, no, no, sorry. As long as you think it’s just this guy, I guess she’ll be fine. I’m sorry to disturb you.’
‘Not at all,’ Dominic replied easily. His deep voice and his thick French accent was very sexy and I remembered the tall handsome man I’d met at Evie’s apartment. ‘I appreciate your concern for my daughter. I don’t doubt she can be, um, how do you say . . . difficult at times, but having a friend like you in London is good for her. Thank you.’
Despite the fact that he couldn’t see me, I felt my cheeks redden. I imagined that his charm was part of what had made him so successful.
‘You don’t have to worry about her, sir,’ I promised. ‘I’ll look after her. I’m just heading into town to get us some food and I’ll stay with her until she feels better.’
‘You’re very kind, Rebecca. Monique and I would love to have you visit us when Evie is feeling up to coming again.’
‘I’d really like that, thank you.’
We said our goodbyes after Dominic had made me promise once again to keep an eye on Evie and to call him if I felt things with her weren’t improving. When I got off the phone I felt better, although admittedly confused. Why hadn’t she mentioned the boy she felt strongly enough about to go into a two-day depression over when they broke up? I had almost finished the food shopping and was trying to decide whether to confront her about the break-up, swinging between letting it go because she obviously didn’t want to talk about it, and trying to sneakily get it out of her because a problem shared was a problem halved, when my phone rang. Expecting it to be Evie asking me to pick up some Ben & Jerry’s, I was surprised to see Richard’s name on the display – I’d thought he was busy this weekend.
‘Hey baby,’ I answered with a smile. We were still in the stage where an unexpected phone call from my new boyfriend gave me butterflies.
‘You need to get here asap,’ he spluttered into the phone. Was this a booty call? Because if it was he wasn’t very good at it – he sounded petrified.
‘Sorry, no can do’ I grinned. ‘I’m afraid we’ll have to skip the session, Evie’s at mine and
she’s in a bad way.’
‘I know, that’s what I mean,’ he said, his voice urgent. ‘I’m at yours now. The girl on your sofa, I think she’s dead.’
65
Evie
When Evie woke, there were a few moments where she could barely remember who she was, let alone where or why. Her brain felt as though it was on fire, blood pounded in her ears and her eyelids were too heavy to open so she didn’t bother trying. Words ran through her mind – I have proof – and she remembered now. She had wanted to die. There had seemed, at that moment at least, like there was no other way out of her own head – however hard she had tried she couldn’t forget the image of James’ father engulfed in flames.
She had been at Rebecca’s, she remembered now, but she must have misjudged the timing. Rebecca had found her too soon and now she was in a bed, a sharp scratching pain in her hand and noise, too much noise to be alone in the flat. She must be in hospital. She gave a groan at having woken up at all – she was still alive and it wasn’t all over. And yet she felt something else, relief maybe? Had she really wanted to die? She hadn’t taken the time to think it through before she had taken the pills, pills the doctor had prescribed her mother to help her sleep and that Evie had slipped in her bag before leaving Wareham. Had her mind been planning it all along, without her even being conscious of it?
She opened her eyes tentatively, like a newborn testing them out for the first time. The bright lights forced them closed again but not before she sensed movement at the side of the bed.
‘Evie?’ a voice, male and concerned but too young to be her father, said.
‘James?’ she croaked, but her throat wouldn’t form the word fully, it was as though she had forgotten how to speak. Opening her eyes again, letting them adjust to the light, she looked over to the seat, expecting to see her . . . her what? Her lover? Her friend? What was he to her now? Nothing.
But it wasn’t him who sat in the chair, elbows on his knees, leaning forward in anticipation of her waking. She didn’t recognise this man, didn’t think she’d ever seen him before.
‘Doctor?’ she tried her voice again but the pain was almost unbearable. ‘Water.’
The man moved quickly to the bedside table and picked up a plastic cup. ‘The doctor said ice chips would be better – can you manage that? There, here, let me.’
And even though she’d never seen him before, and she was fairly certain from his jeans and polo T-shirt and the fact that he’d said ‘the doctor’ that he wasn’t one, Evie let him take a chip from the cup and place it gently on her outstretched tongue. His movements were slow and tender and he had a kind face; somehow she knew she could trust him. As the ice soothed her tongue and the cool water slid down her throat, she still didn’t have the energy to ask who he was. As if he had read her mind, he spoke.
‘I’m Richard, a friend of Rebecca,’ he said, quietly, as though speaking to a young child or a frightened animal. ‘I came to visit her and I found you on the sofa. I saw the pills and I thought you were . . . I couldn’t wake you so I called an ambulance. Rebecca came straight here but she went back to get you some things while you were having your stomach pumped, and your dad, he’s just arrived and he’s talking to the doctors.’
It was a lot of information to take in considering the insides of her head felt like they had swelled to double their usual size. But as she couldn’t ask any questions due to the red-hot poker that was lodged in her throat, she laid her head back on the pillow and tried to digest what the man – she had already forgotten his name – had told her. Her father was here. That was the first piece of information that sank in and lodged itself in her mind. He was going to be fucking livid. After everything he had been through with Mama, the times she had seen him go with her in the ambulance, coming home with his eyes red raw from crying at her bedside. His voice hoarse from promises that he’d be a better man. If there was anything more horrific than seeing a grown man you idolise more than Leonardo DiCaprio reduced to a sobbing mess then Evie was yet to experience it. No – her mind slipped to the image of fire licking up a pair of curtains, spreading like a sheet across the ceiling, snaking itself around the father of the only boy she’d ever loved – she had experienced it. It was the image that had accompanied her into a sleep she had hoped never to wake up from.
Her stomach had been pumped. She wondered at this – how did they do it? She’d heard of people having it done when they’d drunk too much or taken one too many drugs but she’d never actually thought about the details. She imagined it was something to do with tubes, and the reason the back of her throat felt like it had been scraped with a rusty spoon.
‘I’ll get the doctor,’ the man said, rising from his chair.
‘No,’ Evie lifted an arm filled with lead. ‘Don’t go.’
She didn’t know who this man was, or why he’d been in Rebecca’s flat. All she knew was that he’d saved her life and for now she didn’t want him to leave.
66
Rebecca
When I awaken it is in the middle of the night, and to the sound of dripping. My blackout curtains have succeeded in sinking the room into perfect darkness, yet I know there is something wrong, there is danger here, in my home, in my bedroom. I push myself into a sitting position but my hands slide against the sheets and when I look down at them, my eyes adjusting to the darkness slightly, they are black and I realise they are wet. I wipe them furiously against my duvet, leaving smears of thick, black liquid everywhere. Blood. My hands are covered in blood and no matter how hysterically I wipe them, still more remains.
It is then that I realise I am not alone.
She stands at the end of the bed and I can see her now, even in the darkness I can see her clearly and I wonder how I did not see her before. She is soaked through, as though she has only a moment ago climbed from the very water that should have stolen her life. She is the source of the dripping sound – water seems to ooze from her, spilling out of her grotesquely parted lips, which are swollen and bruised, her nose, her eye sockets. Her hair is plastered sodden to her head, the right side thick with the same black liquid that still won’t come off my hands. It oozes from a fist-size hole in her skull where her head bounced off the rocks at the foot of the cliff from which she fell. I try to move but I am frozen in terror. What is she doing here? Why has she come for me?
But when she speaks, then I know. Her voice – yet not her voice at all – is the rasp of a creature that has dragged itself from the depths of hell and it doesn’t just spew from her broken mouth, it comes from all around me and I know I will hear those words for as long as I live.
You could have saved me.
My eyes fly open as I wake to the sound of screaming and realise it is my own. My heart thuds in my chest so fast that I think for a minute I am having a heart attack. I can’t catch my breath and sweat pours down my back, welding my T-shirt to my skin. As I scan the empty room and realise that the horrific apparition was only a dream, my breathing calms but my heartbeat doesn’t slow. Already though, she is fading from memory, her accusing eyes, the broken, battered and bruised face. Like tendrils of smoke the vision is impossible to grasp and by the time I have glanced at my hands – they are clean and so are my bedsheets – I can barely remember what my best friend looked like at all. The feeling though, that slightly sick feeling when you know something is wrong, that everything looks normal but there is something so very wrong here, that remains. And the voice. I can still hear her voice.
I feel foolish now, and glad for once that I don’t share my bed with anyone else. God only knows what an idiot I might have made of myself – what I might have screamed into the darkness.
The dawn light filters in through a gap in the curtains; the day has made enough inroads for me to get up. There’s no way I can sleep any longer now, but still that childish part of me, the part I thought was buried much deeper, urges me not to slide my legs out of the covers, not to put my feet on the floor. You’re okay as long as your feet aren�
�t on the floor, she whispers. No one can get you in bed. Such a childish thought to have – of course grown-up Rebecca knows you’re no safer in your bed than you are anywhere else. It is not the dead you should be afraid of, after all, it’s the living. And the living don’t respect the rules like the bogeyman does.
Still, when I do make the transition from bed to floor, I make sure not to get too close to the edge, lest those cold wet fingers clasp around my ankle.
All throughout the day I can’t shake that feeling of wrongness. I’m jumping at my own reflection and getting out seems like the only option to take my mind off the dream. The house is too quiet, her voice too loud inside my head.
Youcouldhavesavedmeyoucouldhavesavedme.
67
Evie
His name was Richard, and it seemed as though he might have been sent from heaven at exactly the moment she had needed him. He was attractive enough, if a bit plain-looking, and wouldn’t have turned her head in any other circumstance. But this wasn’t any other circumstance. She had wanted to die. And it was because of Richard she was still alive.
He’d left her room eventually, when her father had stormed in without even a glance or a thank you for the man who had saved his daughter’s life. She found out afterwards that he’d sent Richard a cheque for a thousand pounds – she didn’t know whether she should be insulted but it was so incredibly Papa that she didn’t bother wasting the energy figuring it out.
The Night She Died Page 18
