Victor picks up the story again. ‘She thought she’d got away with it, but the moment I told her that the notebook had been found, her time was up. That’s why she tried to kill me. She didn’t know I was going to come to Cambridge to find him.’
‘She might have got away with it, too,’ says Marie. ‘So many factors at play. Victor coming to Cambridge, Edgar reading through to the end and finding those pages in Rachel’s handwriting. My escape.’
‘Did she want us to find you? When she sent Anna and me north?’ Lucy says.
Marie shakes her head. ‘It was only when she listened to Anna’s message saying I’d escaped that it gave her one last desperate chance to try and get away with it. When she sent you guys off in the car, she was in full destruct mode. Scorched earth.’
A pause. ‘She was trying to kill me. And Anna,’ Lucy says. It’s not a question. ‘She did something to the car. She knew it was going to crash.’
Victor nods. ‘You tried to take Edgar away from her. Anna was just collateral damage. She wanted you to die, she was going to kill Edgar. She was totally reckless, even locking herself in the burning shed in a desperate attempt to make it look as if Marie had tried to kill her after murdering Edgar. But she didn’t get away with it this time.’ He doesn’t need to say any more.
60
‘Marie,’ Lucy says. ‘Why did you leave?’
Marie looks over the ward, but she’s seeing the hills instead, Janice’s face in death. ‘Two things. Firstly, Edgar sent photocopies of some of the notebook pages – he’d printed off the scans Victor emailed before he came over, put them in the food box.I know exactly what you did, that’s what he said. He meant it to be threatening, to show why he was punishing me.But as soon as I saw them, I knew it wasn’t me. I knew I hadn’t written them, and that meant I wasn’t the one who had killed Gabriela. It was such a release, to discover that. It sounds ridiculous that I accepted that I had, but the evidence seemed so strong. I’d blanked so much out of my mind.’
She’s silent for a while, still far away. With an effort, she brings herself back. ‘I couldn’t leave Janice, though. She wouldn’t have survived without me. But it’s thanks to Edgar’s lack of care that she didn’t last longer. That’s what I can’t forgive. He knew the effect that alcohol had on her. He watched it enough times on the CCTV, how messed up she got. How difficult it was for me to deal with. But he was trying to torture me, any way he could. Janice drank herself to death. I set the house on fire, said my goodbyes, and I left. Hitched my way south. It took days. I wish I’d got here sooner . . . If I’d been faster, Edgar would still be alive . . .’ She bows her head, unable to suppress her sadness anymore. ‘I know he was a shit, but I loved him. He loved me. Then he thought I’d murdered his wife. He was furious with himself as much as me. That’s why he was so appalling to me afterwards.’
Victor looks at Marie, holds out his hands. ‘He did love you. Look, he might have been married, but it was only on paper. Gabriela was with me. She was carrying my child. We met at university; she came with me to the UK. Edgar married her for me, for us, so she could stay in the country when her visa ran out. We were so stupid; we didn’t think about what the repercussions could be.’
‘I’m so sorry,’ Lucy says. ‘You lost them both. That’s terrible.’
‘I don’t understand,’ Marie says. Her brain has suspended itself above her head. She’s hearing his words, but they have no meaning.
‘He didn’t know he was going to fall in love with you,’ Victor says. ‘It was before you were on the scene. If he’d known, I don’t think he would have done it. It was an act of friendship to me, nothing more. He loved her too, but only as my wife. He could never forgive himself for the fact that his actions put her in the way of such terrible harm, ruined my life too.’
Marie can’t quite take in what Victor is saying.
‘I’m sorry, I should have told you before,’ Victor says. ‘It never seemed the right time, though. There’s been a lot going on.’
Despite herself, Marie laughs. It’s the biggest understatement. ‘In the notebooks, Rachel talks about Gabriela cheating on Edgar. Did she just see the two of you together?’
‘Yes,’ Victor says. ‘We were careless. But we had no idea what danger she was in.’
Marie nods. ‘Edgar must have been so angry – he was trying to do something good and it led to carnage. The loss of your wife. The loss of your child.’ She reaches out to Victor, squeezes his hand.
‘There isn’t a day goes past I don’t think of them, how it should have been.’ There’s a long silence.
‘Do you think he ever had good intentions for me and Janice? I mean, when he set up the scheme?’ Marie says.
Lucy has a reply to this. ‘I’ve been thinking a lot about that. I think he did, to begin with. I think it was genuinely intended to be a way of dealing with lifers that was more humane than just locking people up and throwing away the key. But he said something to me about the death of his mother, how it changed everything.’
‘They were always very close,’ Marie says.
‘So that will have fucked with his head, to put it bluntly. Plus the power of it. No one individual should have that much control over another’s life – it can only ever go wrong,’ Victor says.
Now for the more immediate past. Victor’s escape from the fire, for one thing.
He’d become friends with Tom, bonding through work, he explained, despite Tom’s original representation of Marie. He’d gone to Tom’s place that Saturday when he got back from Cambridge, went to sleep in the spare room, exhausted, woken only by chance by the smoke alarm when the fire started. He got downstairs to find that Tom was already overwhelmed by smoke, dead on the ground, a strong smell of petrol in the air as the front door burned in flames. It wasn’t long before the smoke got Victor, too. He was lucky that the fire brigade made it in time.
‘Rachel again?’ Lucy says.
‘Yes. She wanted that notebook destroyed. She thought I had it. Didn’t care who else was hurt.’
‘Why didn’t they arrest Rachel sooner?’
‘Not quite enough evidence, although they knew it was her after I showed them the proof. They just needed this one final part. I’m afraid that’s why you had to suffer what you did,’ Victor says. He’s looking anywhere but at Lucy.
