The Night She Died

by Jenny Blackhurst

  ‘Right,’ Evie muttered. She unfolded herself from the blanket and stood up, stumbling slightly.

  ‘Whoa,’ I put out my hand to steady her. ‘Watch the fire.’

  ‘I think I’m going to go to bed,’ she said, pushing her hair from her face. ‘I feel a bit ill.’

  ‘Are you okay?’ I asked, ever concerned. ‘I’ll get you some water, bring it in to you.’

  ’Thanks.’

  When I took the water in to her Evie was already in bed, half asleep. As I placed the glass quietly on her bedside table she stirred, opened her eyes slightly and looked at me.

  ‘I am sorry, you know. If that makes a difference,’ her words were slurry and I wondered if she was still half dreaming. Did she mean sorry for Richard? Was this her finally acknowledging that she knew about my feelings for him? After all these years the last thing I wanted to do was to open that Pandora’s box.

  ‘It’s okay, shhhh, go to sleep,’ I pulled the covers tighter over her.

  ‘I just wish I could tell them,’ she said, more urgent this time. ‘Tell his family I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to kill him. If I could just tell James . . .’

  ‘What?’

  Evie’s eyes were closed again now, she was drifting off. She was dreaming, obviously, the wine and the late hour – a silly dream.

  ‘James Addlington,’ she muttered, and then one last thing before she fell silent. ‘His father. I loved him, you know? And I killed his father, but I’m sorry, I promise.’

  89

  Rebecca

  Unable to sleep, I’d been haunted by Evie’s words. Suddenly the conversation we’d had in the back garden took on a whole new meaning to me. Had we even been talking hypothetically? With the house swathed in darkness and Evie snoring gently, I’d gone back to the spare room and opened up my laptop, typed in the name ‘James Addlington’.

  James Addlington was the name of the owner of a multi-million-pound IT consultancy firm, which muddied the results a lot. When the initial search threw up LinkedIn and Facebook profiles, news articles and business reports for a man who was very much alive, I’d almost stopped straight away. What was I thinking? This James Addlington was a successful businessman and hadn’t been murdered. Evie had obviously drunk too much and been in the middle of a vivid dream when I’d spoken to her – there was no way she had killed someone. Then I thought about the intensity in her face when she’d spoken about the reasons someone might kill another person and I’d added one more search – ‘James Addlington fire’.

  The results were the same as those I showed Richard, only that time I’d known what I was looking for and what I’d find. This time it took me much longer to piece together the details of the man killed in a house fire the night of his son’s engagement party. I’d spent half of the night determining that the fire had taken place the weekend before Evie had made her now infamous suicide attempt, and that what she had said to me might not have been the ramblings of a drunken woman after all.

  When morning came, after only a few hours of fitful sleep, I woke to hear Evie bumping around the kitchen. When she saw me standing in the doorway she started guiltily and I wondered how much she remembered, if anything, of what she’d said to me the night before.

  ‘Sleep well?’ I asked, scrutinising her reaction for any hint of a memory. She shook her head.

  ‘Not really. I had the most horrible dreams – but I suppose that’s what too much wine does to you. Gives you an overactive imagination.’

  We’d spent breakfast in much the same way – both waiting to see if the other would mention the previous evening’s conversation. Neither of us did. I’d seen enough from my research to tell me that Evie had got herself involved in something terrible, but not enough to figure out any specifics, such as why Evie had been at the engagement party of the man she’d told me she loved. Not for the first time, I began to wonder if I knew my best friend at all. The answer to that was still to come a few days later.

  90

  Rebecca

  Did you ever love someone so much that you would have done anything to overlook their glaring flaws? That was me with Evie. Even when she and Richard got together I managed to tell myself that she had no idea that Richard was supposed to be mine, even though she must have known how strange it was to find a guy in my apartment – I’d never so much as mentioned any man other than my new boyfriend. But no, I’d given her the benefit of the doubt – she said she loved him and he was clearly smitten with her. It never occurred to me to confront her, to try and fight for my man. After all, what good would it have done? I like to think she’d have stood aside in a heartbeat but what kind of relationship would Richard and I have had, knowing he wanted her instead of me? So I was unselfish, I put two people’s happiness ahead of my own.

  I’d waited patiently for her to tell me about the fire at the Addlington residence. Even though a huge part of me was screaming to know what happened, I’d put it from my mind, told myself that if she had been involved she would have told me. It had been an accident, nothing more. I thought we told each other everything. I trusted that I was the one to have made a mistake. I was wrong.

  When she came to me that day, her eyes puffy and red, I wondered if this was it. If this was when she told me about what had really happened the night of the fire. I folded her into my arms, took her over to the sofa and let her sob into my jumper sleeve. Eventually, when the sobs subsided, I held her away from me.

  ‘What’s happened?’

  Evie pushed a balled fist into her eye to wipe away the tears.

  ‘I’m pregnant.’

  A baby? That was the last thing I was expecting to hear. I’d been expecting her to tell me about the fire that had killed a man but in that instant the fire was all but forgotten.

  ‘But that’s wonderful news,’ I said. ‘Why are you crying? Isn’t Richard pleased? What did he say?’

  ‘I haven’t told him,’ Evie sniffed. ‘I can’t. The baby . . . it’s not his.’

  Trying to explain the wave of emotions that hit me in that second is nearly impossible. She had the only man I’d really loved absolutely besotted with her, willing to do anything to make her happy, and she cared so little that she had got pregnant by someone else. How dare she treat him that way?

  ‘Whose then?’

  Evie shook her head. ‘Some guy from back home. It doesn’t matter. The point is, what am I going to do?’

  ‘Do? Do you want to be with this guy?’

  ‘I thought I did,’ she said, her eyes welling up again. ‘But that’s not possible. There’s too much . . . it’s complicated.’

  ‘You have to tell Richard.’

  Evie looked shocked, her beautiful face knotted in a frown. It hadn’t even occurred to her to tell him the truth. Of course it hadn’t.

  ‘Of course I can’t tell him, Rebecca, are you completely out of your mind? He’d never forgive me, and even if he did it would break his heart. No.’

  She shook her head, her hands wringing. I saw that they were shaking, she desperately needed a drink and she couldn’t have one now. That might have been the moment I really noticed how much of Evie’s life had centred around being drunk to have fun.

  ‘Well you can’t get rid of it . . . you’d be devastated. You’d end up resenting Richard as completely as if it were his decision.’

  ‘You’re right,’ she nodded, chewing on her lip. ‘You’re always right. I’m going to have to keep the baby. I couldn’t do that . . .’

  ‘So you’re going to tell him?’ I had a suspicion I knew what she was about to say, and the thought filled my stomach with lead.

  ‘I could tell him it’s his. We’ll raise the baby as our own, and Richard will never have to know. He’s going to be over the moon.’

  91

  Rebecca

  He’s going to be over the moon.

  Over the moon.

  The words drifted around in my head all evening, alongside images of the two of them choosing baby names and putting
up scan photos on Facebook, all the while Richard being completely in the dark about his happy family. How could this be happening? Could I let it happen? How could I stop it?

  I could tell Richard, of course, but Evie was right, he’d be devastated and what if he stuck around to raise the baby as his anyway? All that would be achieved would be for me to be cast out of our little threesome – something they had probably been planning for a while anyway. I wouldn’t be surprised if Evie had lied to me about the baby not being Richard’s in the hopes I’d tell on her and she could pretend I was just trying to cause trouble. And if she wasn’t lying, was she really expecting me to sit back and allow Richard to raise another man’s child? Is that how little she thought of me, that I’d defend her actions, keep her secrets, no matter what?

  If it was Richard’s decision to break it off, then perhaps I could stay out of it, remain unscathed. I could even help with the baby once he had gone, it would be just the two of us again. Evie and Becky against the world.

  But how?

  That’s when I thought of it, the great idea that led to where we are today. The fire. If I called the police anonymously to say Evie was involved, they would at least be obligated to look into the tip-off, wouldn’t they? And if the police were involved Richard would have to take it seriously. It might be enough by itself to make him see sense, and while all the past secrets were coming out maybe she’d tell him the truth about the baby.

  And if not I’d think of something else.

  92

  Rebecca

  As it turned out, Richard didn’t find out anything. She’d kept it all from him, not just the blackmail letters but the visit from the police – they had arrived while he was at football, which just demonstrates the difference in luck between Evie and I, doesn’t it?

  I watched her with him, wondering when she was going to tell him, waiting for the moment he announced he was going to be a father. And the more I watched her pretend to be normal, pretend to be in love with him, the more it ate away at me, gnawing at my conscience. I’d always thought of our relationship as an open book, a diary we shared of our hopes and fears, our visions for the future, our disappointments from the past. That was until I found out that Evie had rewritten huge chunks of it.

  She hadn’t even told me about the letters, or about the visit from the police, yet I knew she must be wondering where the next attack would come from. At this point I knew nothing of Camille, or who she thought was responsible for the letters. Did she suspect me at all?

  She approached me one evening, coming to my flat rather than I to hers, which was unusual. I knew something was wrong the moment I saw her, she was jittery and flushed with anxiety. She picked at the skin around her thumbnail, causing angry red gouges in her skin.

  ‘I’m going to tell him tonight,’ she avoided looking directly at me. ‘About the baby.’

  ‘Oh.’ That was it then. She’d decided to go ahead with the deception, and the police visit, the letters, none of them had worked. If I’d known more details of the affair perhaps I could have made sure Richard found out by himself, but I knew Evie was clever enough to cover her tracks. Hell, even I hadn’t known until she’d confessed.

  I don’t even think I meant to say it. None of it was part of a grand plan, you have to understand that. It might look that way now, like I callously planned it all along, but at the time it seemed to sweep me away, like someone had left the tap running in my mind and my thoughts were drowning me, spilling from my mouth without warning.

  ‘Are you going to tell him about the man you killed?’

  If I’d been watching it on a movie I can imagine feeling a surge of triumph at this point, the point when the killer realises they are found out and their jaw slackens, the blood drains from their face. Instead I felt only the pounding of my own heart inside my chest, heat rising in my cheeks. I had no idea how this would end. Would she kill me now? Was my best friend such a cold-blooded killer that I had put myself in danger thinking I was so clever?

  ‘What are you on about?’ Her voice was shocked and indignant but her face didn’t match the outrage. She remembered what she’d said that night, and now she knew I remembered it too.

  ‘In the fire. The one you told me about, remember?’

  Evie gave a fake little laugh that made me want to hit her. Still she was lying to me! After all I’d done for her, all the times I’d been there for her, she still couldn’t be honest.

  ‘Oh, you’re talking about my drunken “confession”,’ she put fingers up for inverted commas. ‘Of course, I should have explained the next morning but I was so embarrassed, then you didn’t mention it and I thought . . .’

  You thought you’d got away with it.

  ‘What I’d meant to say, what I thought I’d said actually, until I woke up the next morning and replayed the conversation to myself, was that I felt responsible for the fire. Maybe if I’d been at the party I could have stopped it or—’

  ‘Bollocks,’ I said, and she jumped at my harsh tone. ‘I know what you said, Evie. Perhaps you remember some of what you said but you clearly don’t remember it all. You told me that you were at that party, and that you killed James Addlington. Did you start the fire? Was it on purpose because you were jealous of that woman – Camille? Your lover’s fiancée?’

  Evie’s face was ashen. ‘It wasn’t me. I made a mistake but I didn’t start the fire.’

  ‘Then why the secrecy? If it wasn’t you, you wouldn’t be charged for it.’

  She shrugged. ‘Maybe, maybe not. I can’t exactly ask our family solicitor for advice, can I? Maybe it’s best if it does come out. I’ve felt guilty about it for years, maybe it’s time I told the truth.’

  ‘And have your baby in jail?’ I said, and her eyes widened. Until then I didn’t even realise I could be so cruel. Now though, I was on a roll. ‘And this James, you’re in love with him?’

  Evie nodded. ‘It sounds pathetic, I know, but I always have been,’ she replied. ‘But it’s complicated. My father never approved of the two of us, our families hated each other . . .’

  ‘Never was there a tale of more woe,’ I said sarcastically.

  Evie gave a humourless smile. ‘Someone else once said that to me. But it’s all in the past now. We couldn’t be together if we wanted to be.’

  ‘Why not?’

  If Evie was still in love with this James, if there was a way they could be together, Evie and her baby would be out of my life forever. And out of Richard’s.

  She told me everything then, or at least as close to everything as I know now. About locking James’ father in his study, and Camille, who had seen her throw away the key, about James who, despite years of no contact whatsoever, still managed to show up in her life and blow it to pieces once more, and about the last words her mother said to her, about James’ father – her real father, the affair he’d had with her mother on a trip to England nine months before she was born and the reason she would throw herself off a cliff one month later. And that was how I got her to fake her death on the night of her wedding. That was how I killed my best friend.

  93

  Rebecca

  When I found her the day of her mother’s funeral, she was close to breaking. Her face was swollen and blotchy from crying and when she saw me she threw herself into my arms. I held her tight and let her cry. For a moment it was just the two of us, just as it had been before, and no one else mattered.

  ‘I don’t know what to do,’ she sniffed, wiping her eyes on her sleeve. ‘I can’t stand carrying his baby and not being able to tell anyone, not even him.’

  I stroked her hair, kissed her forehead.

  ‘Are you sure it’s his?’ I whispered. She nodded.

  ‘I’m pretty sure. I can’t be certain, but the dates match the night we . . . What am I going to do? Camille is blackmailing me anyway. She must know about us. She called the police! And if she finds out James is my flesh and blood . . . She won’t stop until I’m in prison or dead.’

>   ‘So let her think you’re dead,’ I said, in a moment of inspiration. And in that second I didn’t think about the future, about a life without her in it. ‘Let them all think you’re dead. Then you and James can be together and without fear the police or papers or your father will ever find you. If you want a life, Evie, you have to die.’

  Now

  94

  Rebecca

  ‘How do you know?’ I demand. James still hasn’t said anything that can tie me to Evie’s suicide but I need to be sure he doesn’t know something I don’t. ’Have you seen her body?’

  ‘No,’ he admits, ‘but she’s not here either, is she?’

  ‘She was supposed to come to you,’ Richard says. His fingers tighten on the photo book he’s holding and I think for a moment it might crumple under his grip.

  ‘Of course. What would be the point otherwise? She had it all arranged, she’d hidden some clothes and booked a hotel in a fake name, she would take a boat to shore and escape before the alarm had barely been raised. She would send me a text to tell me she was okay and then lie low for a couple of weeks, before making contact at a prearranged date and time, at which point I would do my own disappearing act. Mine didn’t need to be so dramatic, she said, I’ve never jumped off a cliff in my life and there was very little chance of me learning now. All I needed to do was fold some clothes up neatly, leave my phone and shoes on a bridge somewhere in the night with a note telling my wife how sorry I was. No one would know there was any real connection between me and Evie after all these years.’

  ‘Except your wife,’ I say bluntly. And me. But he said no one. He doesn’t know this was my idea, that he’s relaying to me my plan. I don’t know how the thought that Evie stayed loyal to me to the end makes me feel. She trusted me.