‘If you say so,’ Tom says, his voice sceptical. ‘I won’t push it. Tell me about these.’ He points at the pile of notes again.
‘These were the only letters I got when I was inside,’ Anna says. ‘For three years. One would turn up every couple of months. I don’t know how they got past the censors, maybe because they used envelopes from my sister’s company so they looked official.’
‘They’re horrible.’
‘They are. But I deserve them,’ she says.
He shakes his head. ‘This is why we have a criminal justice system,’ he says. ‘Otherwise we’d have the justice of the mob.’
‘Maybe we should,’ she says. She takes the letters back from him and folds them up, putting them back into their pile.
‘Your sister wrote them?’ he says.
‘Her husband. Toby’s dad. I know his handwriting. But it’s her office on the letterhead. It’s a joint effort.’
‘Have you tried getting back in touch?’
‘I ruined their son’s life, Tom. There’s nothing for me to say. The only news they want to hear is that I’m dead.’
She’s said it now, matter of fact as she can.
‘That can’t be true.’
She smiles at him. He has tried to understand, but still grasps so little. ‘I’ve come to terms with it. I had it all planned out.’ This last sentence said in a mutter.
He hears it, though. ‘What? What did you have planned?’
She’s not ready to reply. His phone starts to ring and with a sense of relief, she slips the letters back into her bag.
The relief is short-lived. He ends the call almost immediately, turning back to her, his expression sharp. ‘What did you have planned, Anna?’
She looks him dead in the eye, and something crosses the space between them, a communication of some sense of the bleakness she’s inhabited since the fatal crash all those years ago.
She’s out of words, exhausted by the revelations. Tom must sense this. Without asking, he makes another pot of coffee, busying himself with rinsing out the cafetière and boiling the kettle. He gets her a clean cup and opens a packet of chocolate digestives before sitting back down at the table and pushing the packet towards her.
‘What’s changed?’ he says.
‘What do you mean?’ The question startles her.
‘If that’s what you were going to do, why would you bother jumping out of the way of the car last night when it was heading straight for you.’
‘I . . . well, I guess it was instinctive,’ she says, noting his interrogative tone.
He nods, as if he guessed already that was what she was going to say. ‘Or why didn’t you just tell the police it was you who killed that poor woman? If you’re so keen to punish yourself, confessing to something you didn’t do would work well.’
Confronted with her twisted logic, Anna’s cheeks burn.
He continues his attack. ‘What were you planning on doing? You talked about going to London – were you going to throw yourself off a bridge or something?’
The words come unbidden to her tongue. ‘I was going to go to St Leonards and walk into the sea.’
He shakes his head, barely able to control a laugh. ‘Seriously?’
‘We used to go there on holiday when we were kids,’ she says with dignity. ‘I wasn’t just trying to copy Virginia Woolf.’
He shakes his head again, but the smile is fading. ‘I’m sorry,’ he says. ‘I know it’s not funny.’ He leans back on his chair, drumming the fingers on his right hand on the table.
The noise drills into her – she wants to slap his hand quiet, wipe the stupid smile off his stupid face. ‘It’s not funny at all.’
