He runs uphill as fast as he can, fighting the sheer slope with all he’s got.
Imogen sits in the car, beside me, her face turned away from mine.
Her apology was remarkable. It moved our relationship to another level.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I should never have lied about harming myself. I was desperate to get out of camp and I didn’t know how else to do it.”
I had intended to be firm with her, to deliver a lecture on the inadvisability of lying, the necessity for honesty between us, but I cracked. I looked into her eyes and saw within them a vulnerability that moved me and also courage. It takes guts to apologize, and I admire her for it. I told her so. I think I handled it very well.
It moves me to think that she got some of her strength from me, but also from her mother who fought me tooth and nail in the moments before she died, even as I made heartfelt vows to her thatI would take the best care of Imogen because I knew that she was mine.
It was different when Rob died. As he slipped beneath the water, I stood at the edge of the shore, knowing I’d tricked him into swimming then and there, when it was almost certainly a risk to his life, and I felt preternaturally calm as I watched the moon brighten the dull swell into which he disappeared. Beneath my feet the rock was slippery, but solid. He resurfaced just once.
You’d have thought he might have fought harder if he was a better man.
I didn’t run, or shout for help, I didn’t stride into the water to try to pull him out. I knew about the dangers of swimming that night, about the rip tide and the merciless currents.
I knew when he went into that water that he was unlikely to survive, and I was happy when he sank beneath the surface for the final time.
I could have saved him, and I didn’t.
I remember well carrying his coffin, the brutal heft of it, how I worried my knees would buckle. All of us in the gang were pallbearers that day, apart from Edie. I wonder, were we paying our respects to Rob as we walked past her with that coffin on our shoulders, teeth clenched and sweating? Or taking part in a beauty parade?
Edie looked so grateful. She didn’t yet know that one of us was responsible for Rob’s death.
But she was soon to discover that another one of us had suspicions about that.
Which was a surprise to me when I found out.
And a problem.
I turn on the radio. I’m realizing that, unfortunately, the silence between Imogen and me isn’t comfortable. Some silences you can breathe deeper in, stretch out wider in, but others constrict you, making every gesture horribly self-conscious. She flinches whenthe sound comes on. It’s a play. We let the overwrought dialogue wash over us as I drive her home.
Edie’s home is a two-story stable conversion on the edge of a village just outside the city. It’s situated at the end of a lane and completely isolated from its neighbors.
Rob and Edie didn’t bother with security. They weren’t that sort of couple. Too golden. It was as if they thought nothing bad would ever happen to them.
When I killed her yesterday morning, nobody heard Edie scream.
Imogen tries to open the passenger door before the car has stopped dead but I’ve got the central locking set up so she can’t. “Hey,” I say. “What’s the hurry?”
Her fingers stay on the handle until I’ve turned the ignition off and released the locks then she shoots out like a cat with its tail on fire.
I follow. By the time I reach her, she’s at the front door of the house and has let herself in.
“Thanks so much,” she says and extends a hand to take her cello, which I’m holding.
I put my foot against the door. “Hey,” I say. “There’s no way I can leave you here alone.”
Emily hears a gunshot.
She straightens and strains to hear more but all she picks up are the raspy kraas of startled crows. She shudders and tells herself that it can’t be unusual to hear shooting out here. Can it? Don’t people shoot all the time in the country?
As the crows settle into silence a bird of prey screams and every muscle in Emily’s body tightens again. Her sense of claustrophobia is mounting, her flight instinct intensifying. But she can’t go anywhere without help.
She isn’t certain what she’s hearing at first or whether she’s imagining it because she’s so desperate. She listens hard. It’s a low drone, a car engine, she’s increasingly sure, faint but unmistakable. It’s not close, but it’s in the vicinity.
She doesn’t know what time it is, but she guesses it’s something like eleven o’clock. Could it be that this is Paul arriving? She thinks it could, and a sob breaks from her chest as she hobbles to the front door.
