Naomi’s heart started to pound. ‘Until?’
‘A week before the wedding.’ Naomi couldn’t reply. ‘After I’d objected as strongly as I could and battled with my conscience about not calling the police – they’d have denied it, of course, and there was no evidence. I didn’t even know who was supposed to be killing you. I decided that the only thing I could do was get involved and stop it happening. Nathan had to deliver what he’d promised them.’
‘Me, dead?’
‘No.’ Dan closed his eyes, opened them, blinked a few times. ‘The rest of the money he owed and your dad’s car. Nathan wanted freedom. He wanted to cut ties with them for ever. Paying his gambling debt was nowhere near enough. He had to buy his way out. That cost your dad’s Rolls Royce, sold online before the wedding for three hundred grand to a guy in the south-east, no questions asked. Lorie was the last in the wedding car, wasn’t she?’
‘What? No, my mum was last out of the house.’
Dan waited.
‘Oh, no, Lorie had forgotten her flowers,’ she went on, ‘so she ran back in the house to get them.’
‘And at the same time,’ Dan continued, ‘she unlocked the back door, leaving it clear for a guy called Noel Beresford to go into the house while you were all out for the day, and help himself to the spare keys your dad has to the garage and his car. Lorie gave them the alarm code number and copies of the car documents. Your dad will have concluded he couldn’t have switched the alarm on that night. All they had to do was wait until your dad brought the car home, then they could help themselves. The cleaner got the blame for leaving the house open and the light off. She got the sack the next day. The insurance company won’t pay out because there was no break in.’
Naomi was boiling with anger.
Dan finished. ‘The car was taken at about midnight. By the early hours, it would have been down south and your dad would have woken up to his car gone without a trace.’
‘Unbelievable.’
‘It was spotted by a traffic policeman, travelling at nearly a hundred and thirty miles an hours down the M1. He caught the registration number, but not the car. The police turned up at your parents’ house the following morning. That was the first your mum and dad knew about the car. The police will never trace the people who took it, or pin it on Nathan and Lorie. Your dad struggled to get the police to even take it seriously enough. They’ve got better things to do than chase stolen cars, even expensive ones. And now you’re dead to them, the car doesn’t matter at all. All part of the plan.’
Naomi was struggling to take it in. ‘How do you know all this?’
‘Lorie’s been in touch with your parents. Nathan’s kept me informed. He thought the whole thing was hilarious. He was on a high because the sale of that car meant freedom for him from those lunatics. Everything had gone smoothly. The last thing was to fake your death, which he thinks has been successful too.’
‘How could anyone conceive of all that?’
Dan shrugged his shoulders. ‘I’ve told you, he’s not right up here.’ Dan tapped the side of his head. ‘Nathan’s incredibly intelligent and he likes a challenge. He likes to mess with people’s heads. The more intricate the game, the better. I’ve protected my parents from him, but he has a talent for finding trouble. I’ve tried so hard to protect Nathan from screwing up. And I couldn’t do it, not since he got involved with that lot, and gambling.’ Dan’s voice was failing. There were tears in his eyes.
Naomi softened her voice for Dan’s sake. ‘He told me it was you who got involved with a bad crowd.’
Dan, in tears, shook his head.
‘Nathan deserves what’s coming to him. And so does she,’ Naomi continued, finding she couldn’t utter Lorie’s name.
‘Too right.’ Dan wiped his eyes angrily. It occurred to Naomi to put her arms around Dan just as they both tuned in to a car crunching across the gravel outside. ‘Stay here.’ Dan jumped to his feet. ‘Whoever it is, I’ll get rid of them.’
He vanished from the room and was back in seconds.
‘You need to hide, now,’ he hissed urgently.
Naomi’s legs were weak as she got to her feet. Her vision vanished then came back. ‘Hide where? Who is it?’
Dan’s hands were shaking. ‘The pantry? No, the upstairs needs checking for traces of you.’ Dan was tugging on her arm with no real sense of where he wanted her to go. Naomi jerked free. ‘Go in the bedroom and lock the door.’
‘Dan, who is it?’ Naomi asked as loudly as she dared.
Dan froze for a moment. His face was without colour. ‘It’s Lorie.’
Naomi’s eyes narrowed. ‘We have the advantage here, Dan.’
‘But we don’t know how to use it.’
A car door slammed outside. Naomi didn’t move. ‘I’m not hiding from her.’
Dan’s eyes opened wide. ‘Naomi, I’m begging you.’
<><><>
The flight had been a blur. Annabel had talked to no one, looked no one in the eye. She’d refused the food and drink she’d been offered and couldn’t account for the passing of a lot of tortured hours. She knew she hadn’t slept. She knew her back and neck ached from tension.
Since Henry had rung to tell her of Naomi’s death and tearfully call her home, the passing of time had mysteriously changed. She’d entered an existence parallel to the one she’d always known – a place where she felt suddenly detached and invisible, where thought and movement happened only in slow motion and sleep never came; where she could watch everyone else scurrying around like insects and feel certain that whatever they were doing didn’t matter half as much as they thought.
After sobbing and screaming and hurling questions at her lonely room until she’d emptied, Annabel had gone still and wondered if she’d ever move or speak or eat again. The thought of Naomi being claimed and buried in some unknowable part of a vast ocean, plagued her. She’d never escape the horror of it. Annabel lay stiff and disabled, thoughts adrift, mind lost at sea, limbs incapable of response. When her brain had agreed to function enough to rouse her muscles, she’d switched on her laptop, booked the first flight to Manchester and slung some stuff wearily into her two suitcases. Stunned by shock, the only thing she’d consciously armed herself with, was her passport.
She’d written a note for the couple who’d rented her a room for the past year and who were away on business, then packed up her old life and robotically taken a taxi to Tokyo airport without saying goodbye to anyone.
The descent registered when her ears began to hurt and she was forced to yawn for relief. The greyness of north-west England was smothering the plane like a thick woollen blanket. Rain was slopping heavily against the windows. Having noticed that much, she slipped back into a trance and imagined what it might be like when she saw Camilla. The plane, struggling through dense cloud, was juddering violently and shook the unhappy thought away. More depressed by the thought of living than dying, Annabel was calm, or numb. She visualised the plane being pelted by lightning, then nose-diving and plummeting to the ground through stormy clouds and erupting into unquenchable flames. If only.
She didn’t look out of the window or wonder how she felt about being back in England. She knew it didn’t matter anymore. Whichever continent was beneath her feet wouldn’t relieve the heaviness that slurred her footsteps or reduce the pressure in her chest that was worse to bear than any physical pain. She just wanted to be home now, back to familiarity and all the things she’d grown to think were dull and unsophisticated. Back to the only two people who’d understand.
Henry met her at the airport alone, and gathered her into his arms. Did this mean Camilla resented that of the two girls, Annabel was the one left? Did this mean she couldn’t look at her? Tears she’d held on to for sixteen hours, broke out. Henry joined in. They stood at the busy meeting point, sandwiched between Annabel’s upright cases, sobbing into each other’s shoulders, unable to move. It was only when someone interrupted, apologised and asked if Annabel was Naomi’s
twin and if he might ask a couple of questions that Henry snatched hold of the cases and hurried Annabel to the car.
Camilla was peering out of the front window from the downstairs study when the car came to a stop at the front of the house. It was dark by now and moonless and starless. Annabel found she couldn’t move. Camilla stumbled outside and made her way in front of the car to Annabel’s side and opened the door. Annabel, managing to stand, fell into Camilla’s open arms. Exhaustion overcame her during the silent moments where Camilla caressed her back and allowed her to cry without expecting her to be strong.
Camilla eventually led her to the warmth and light of the house. As they passed through the front door together, Annabel muttered some apology for past behaviour. Camilla did the same, adding that it didn’t matter, that nothing mattered anymore except that she was safely home.
Camilla offered to put the kettle on and Annabel got stuck beside the small hall table that held a potted orchid and a burning lamp. She stared at the painting above it. She didn’t notice herself. She examined Naomi to her left, hair parted in the middle without a fringe and falling loosely, unblemished forehead, dark eyes shining innocently and a sweet smile, reminding Annabel how she’d been willing to please the guy who’d taken the picture with the intention of painting it, but that she’d been too shy to speak to him. Her long fingers – trained and shaped even then to tease incredible sound out of her piano – were just out of the shot, but Annabel remembered, suddenly, that they’d been clasped together on her knee. One shoulder was slightly raised, betraying her self-consciousness behind the smile.
Annabel gripped the table with both hands, dropped her head and was swamped by a wave of pain. The house pressed in on her with its memories and its hidden treasures and its reminders in every corner, of Naomi. The comfort she’d expected from home, didn’t come. There was only crushing guilt. She wondered as she thought and pictured it just a couple of rooms away, how she’d ever face the accusing tone of Naomi’s piano.
<><><>
With only a few seconds, Naomi flew to the bedroom and looked over it with a critical eye. Everything looked undisturbed. Footsteps pressed on gravel outside. She rushed into the bathroom and cleared a couple of long dark hairs from the bath. Since learning the truth, she’d used the same bedroom with the bathroom without the chains. The bed had been unbolted from the wall and moved to its original position, the holes filled in. Every day, she made the bed and straightened the bedroom in case they needed to leave quickly. Every time they’d eaten, Dan had carefully and immediately washed the pots and put them away. She had virtually no clothes to worry about. The few clothes she had were in the wardrobe.
It was there she hurried to next. She took hold of both wardrobe doors at the same time and opened them. As she looked at the couple of items in the wardrobe and the bag that still held her dirty underwear, there were three equally spaced knocks at the front door.
‘Think,’ she hissed to herself. She couldn’t. You could lock yourself in the bedroom. She rushed to the bedroom door and turned the key. There was nothing she could do but climb inside the almost empty wardrobe and try to close the doors. Sitting inside the locked room, in view of anyone curious enough to look through the keyhole, didn’t seem like cover enough.
‘Coming,’ she heard Dan call from downstairs, which she took as her final warning. Pulling the doors towards her simultaneously, then letting go just before they trapped her fingers, worked. They snapped shut, leaving about half a centimetre of a gap that would allow some light once her eyes adjusted.
As Dan opened the front door, Naomi slid down the side of the wardrobe and quietly settled into a sitting position, knees to her chin. Her body was trembling. Anxiety or anger? Both. She wrapped her arms around her legs to comfort herself then wondered how cool Dan was feeling downstairs.
‘Lorie?’ she heard Dan’s voice feigning surprise, but not pleasure. ‘You’re lucky I was in. What are you doing here today?’
Naomi only caught snatches of her response. ‘Needed someone to talk to,’ and then, ‘bored without Nathan,’ stuck in her mind so that she missed everything else.
Dan led Lorie into the kitchen right beneath her, making Naomi conscious of the need to be still. She realised that Dan was letting her in on the conversation, which she followed closely and heard almost word-for-word.
‘This is nice. You’ll have to show me around,’ Lorie said.
Dan said, ‘Later,’ then, ‘you’ve got a suntan since I last saw you.’ Diversion tactics.
‘Well I’ve been away with my mother of course,’ she said, using the official story. ‘Obviously I couldn’t go before the wedding, so we booked to leave the day after. She was desperate for a bit of sun after all her treatment, so we went to Spain for a week.’
‘Let’s hope Camilla never wants to see the holiday photos,’ Dan said, sarcastically.
‘At a time like this?’ she laughed.
‘Doesn’t Camilla know your mum?’
‘They’ve never met. Put the kettle on then, it’s freezing out there.’
Dan scraped a kitchen chair. Naomi imagined him getting up and having to think about making drinks. ‘How are Henry and Camilla?’
‘As you’d expect,’ she said, tone light, ‘in bits.’
The words winded Naomi. Tears wet her knees quickly. She stifled the snivels. There was a long silence before Dan said, ‘Do you really think you’re going to get away with this?’
Lorie laughed, suddenly. ‘You’re involved, Danny. Do I think we’re going to get away with it? We have. It’s over. We mixed with no one out there. Spoke to no one. Nathan shopped alone and brought food back to our little place close to the sea. It was so romantic. A few people saw us together, at a distance, lying on the beach or taking a walk, but we were so careful. I wore shades the whole time, even on the ship. You’ve seen people on the news being interviewed, telling in their broken English how in love we were.’
‘How the hell did you manage to fake her death and have eye witnesses.’
Lorie laughed again. ‘Genius, hey? It was easy. One week together alone, then board a ship and fall overboard the first night before anyone has a chance to recognise me.’
‘I know a very good psychiatrist,’ Dan broke in.
‘So book yourself in, Danny,’ Lorie laughed again, ‘you could do with a new perspective. So, anyway, I dyed my hair blonde, became someone else, got off the ship when it docked, worked my way back to the airport, came back using my own passport. Simple.’
Dan must have been speechless because he said nothing. Eventually, Lorie spoke again.
‘What are you doing out here in this isolated house, Danny?’
There was a long pause. ‘Thinking.’
‘What about?’
‘What a mess this all is.’
‘Mess? I don’t think so. Nathan’s free. You’ve got nothing to do with this, officially. You can get back to your job at the hospital. Henry and Camilla think I’m starting a degree course. Nathan and me, we’ll let things settle for a few months. Nathan needs to be visible. Then we’ll start a new life abroad. Maybe buy a few houses, rent them out. If we invest carefully, we’ll never have to work again. For Nathan, no more gambling or involvement with Solomon’s crew. A new start for everyone.’
‘Except the Hamiltons.’ Another drawn out pause. ‘Don’t you ever stop to think about what this has done to them?’
‘You did it.’ Lorie’s voice was unconcerned, amused if anything. ‘They have money, another daughter, they’ll survive. They’ll probably sell up and go back to South Africa. I’ve brought you some money. Nathan’s paying you fifteen grand for the job, plus the five he owes you. Here’s twenty grand. Enjoy it.’
‘I don’t want twenty thousand landing in my account, thank you.’
‘Whatever you say,’ Lorie said. ‘But you’re a murderer looking after ill people, think of that. And think of the headlines if you go soft on us and start thinking about a confession.’
‘I won’t be confessing anything. Don’t worry about that.’
‘Good.’ Some shuffling around. ‘Well at least take this then.’
‘My mother’s ring. How thoughtful! I’ll smuggle it into the house so she can puzzle over why it’s shrunk.’
The next sound took a while to register. It had gone quiet downstairs. Another car was approaching the house. Naomi heard Dan scrape the chair forcefully and get to his feet.
‘There’s someone here.’
Lorie was following him out of the kitchen. ‘You’re jumpy, Danny. Cool down and stop acting like a convict.’
‘I came here for peace and quiet,’ Dan said, not quietly. Naomi realised quickly that the rest of his sentence was for her. His voice was raised. ‘It’s the guy who owns the house. I forgot he was coming to mend a tap upstairs.’
‘So let him mend it,’ Lorie said in the same tone.
It took Naomi a couple of seconds to grasp that she had to unlock the door. She quietly opened the wardrobe door and crawled onto the wooden floor and silently stood. By now, Dan was greeting someone at the door. Naomi fumbled inside her pocket for the key and tiptoed to the lock. She noiselessly pushed the key into the hole and turned. That done, she crept back to the wardrobe.
Out of the small gap, Naomi could see a bit of the room. The owner, obviously not wanting to intrude for longer than necessary, came straight up to the bedroom and stopped and turned to look behind him, right in front of the wardrobe within Naomi’s narrow view. Naomi took shallow noiseless breaths and kept very still. She heard more footsteps. Dan walked in. She was sure Lorie was following.
‘Any problems when that torrential rain fell?’
‘No,’ Dan lied.
‘You’ve put the bed back I see,’ the guy commented.
‘Yes,’ Dan said after a small hesitation. Naomi clenched her jaw. He carried on speaking before the guy could say anything more. ‘I’ll leave you to it. We’ll be downstairs if you need us.’
Either Side of Midnight (The Midnight Saga Book 1) Page 29
