Suspecting she’s about to blame Jack, I avert my gaze and concentrate on checking her limbs.
‘I warned you about him.’ Lina grabs hold of my hand, squeezing it tightly.
Stop!I scream inside.Please stop.I have to know what happened, of course I do, but I can’t bear to hear it. ‘Lina, please let go.’ I try to extract my hand, but she hangs on to me grimly.
‘Nan, let go.’ Sounding bewildered, Evie tries to intervene. ‘You’rehurtingher. You need to letgo.’ She takes hold of her wrist.
Lina only tightens her hold. ‘You have to get away from him,’ she hisses.
‘For pity’s sake, Lina, letgoof me!’ I yank my hand away. ‘What iswrongwith you?’ I ask, glaring down at her as I straighten up and stagger back a step.
‘There’snothingwrong with me,’ she responds agitatedly. ‘My memory can be a little faulty, but that’s because of the antidepressants. I’m not senile, thoughhewould have you believe otherwise. I amnotwrong about him.’
As she speaks, she attempts to raise herself. She’s struggling, breathless, I realise. Instinctively, I move back towards her, but Evie is quicker, wrapping her arms around her and supporting her.
‘I’ll fetch the first aid box.’ I turn away, my chest thudding. This is not what it appears to be, I try to reassure myself. Jack did not dothis.
‘How naïve are you?’ Lina calls after me as I hurry to the stairs. ‘Do you honestly believe what happened to that young girl was a coincidence? That her being in your bedroom was innocent?’ She drives her point home like a knife.
I ignore her. I can’t think straight. Can’t breathe.
‘Do you think I did this to myself?’ Lina’s needling voice follows me along the landing. ‘That I threw the whisky bottle at myself?’
Tears blinding me, I go to the bathroom and fumble in the medicine cabinet for the first aid kit. Finally finding it in the cupboard under the sink, I pull it out, slam the cupboarddoor and clutch the rim of the sink. My chest pounds so hard I fear I’m about to have a panic attack. Is she right? Have I been utterly naïve in believing all that Jack has said? I recall the intrinsic kindness he’d shown me, the beautiful sculpture he bought of my beloved golden retriever. It had taken my breath away, banished any reservations I might have had about sharing anything about myself with him. That was when he began to confide in me about Natalia. It was clear he felt he’d failed her. He couldn’t have been lying. I felt his pain. It was palpable. Hopelessly confused, feeling drained emotionally and physically, I stay where I am for a moment, waiting for the dizziness that sweeps over me to pass.
I have to talk to him. Where the hell is he anyway? I doubt he wouldn’t intervene if he was listening to all of this, which means he’s obviously not in the house. First, though, I have to dress Lina’s wound and get her back to the annexe. Evie will go with her, I’ve no doubt of that. I don’t want her to, but I worry now that Lina can’t be trusted to be on her own. But surely this whole thing is contrived? Ithasto be.
As I pull open the bathroom door, steeling myself to go back to her, I hear Jack down below. ‘What the bloody hell’s going on?’ he asks.
Even from the landing, I can hear the shock in his voice, and I fly to the stairs. Then stop, gripping the rail hard as I see Lina backing away from him, her face horrified. ‘Don’t come near me!’ she cries, her voice high-pitched and hysterical. ‘Don’t you dare touch me!’
THIRTY-EIGHT
JACK
Jack was crouching to sweep up the glass from the floor when he heard Kara come back after making sure Lina was ‘safely’ in the annexe. As if it was her who needed keeping safe. It was Evie who needed to be kept safe. Lina was influencing her. Kara, too. Turning her against him. She’d avoided eye contact with him as she’d helped the older woman to the door. Lina was playing traumatised and frail masterfully. His gut twisted as he considered the damage she was causing.
Discarding the dustpan and brush as Kara came through to the lounge, he straightened up. ‘I assume Evie’s chosen to stay with her?’ he asked, though he knew the answer. He’d seen from the frightened confusion in his daughter’s eyes that she didn’t know who to believe, and that almost ripped his heart from inside him.
Pressing a hand to her forehead, Kara answered with a tired nod.
Jack took a breath, then, ‘You know I didn’t do this, right?’ he ventured cautiously.
Still not looking at him, she didn’t respond, confirming that she didn’t know anything of the sort.
‘She’s dangerous, Kara,’ he warned her, willing her to believe him. ‘Surely you must see that now?’
She met his gaze finally, guardedly. ‘Strange, that,’ she said. ‘That’s exactly what Lina is trying to convince me you are.’
Jack felt his jaw tense. Working to quash the anger building inside him, he tried to think of something he could say that would convince her that what had happened here wasn’t how it seemed.
‘Why did you do it?’ Kara asked suddenly. ‘In what world do you imagineanythingcould excuse violence?’ She stared at him with a mixture of fury and disillusionment.
Jack felt his heart sink. There was nothing he could say, was there? Lina had planted the seeds of doubt deep. The Oscar-worthy performance he’d witnessed when he’d walked back in after leaving precisely because he didn’t trust himself to be alone with the woman had made sure they took root. ‘You believe her story then?’ he asked.
Kara looked at him in astonishment. ‘She’sinjured,’ she pointed out, as if he wasn’t aware of this fact, Lina plainly having gone to great melodramatic lengths to make it obvious, smearing blood across her cheek, backing away from him in feigned horror once she had her audience.
‘It’s self-inflicted.’ He kneaded his forehead wearily. ‘But I don’t suppose you think she’s capable of that any more than she is of lying through her teeth?’
