Yet she feels it again now. But this time, the throbbing rises upwards, through her stomach and up towards her chest, fizzing into her shoulders and then when it reaches her throat, she finally recognises it for what it is. Power. She sees with sudden, certain clarity that she is strong precisely because of the pain she has withstood and that she can do this. She levers herself upright.
Fuck Annabelle, she thinks. That woman is not going to get away with it.
She walks back down the corridor and into the drawing room, where Annabelle is bending to leave the sparkling elderflower on the side-table. Marisa isn’t there. The sofa cushion is indented where she was sitting. Jake and Chris turn to look at Kate as she enters. Annabelle keeps her back to her.
‘Are you all right—?’ Jake starts to ask.
‘Where’s Marisa?’
‘In the bathroom,’ he says. ‘Are you OK?’ He looks worried.
Kate ignores him. In her mind’s eye, she sees a gun cylinder spinning and clicking and the safety catch sliding off. She imagines lifting the sight up to her eye and pointing the barrel directly at Annabelle’s forehead.
‘Annabelle,’ she says. ‘I’d like you to tell everyone what you just told me in the kitchen.’
Annabelle straightens and sighs audibly.
‘Oh for goodness’ sake, what is it now? I don’t knowwhatyou’re talking about, Kate.’
Annabelle swivels on her heel and faces her, and Kate is astonished by her composure. Annabelle’s face seems to have become younger and less lined, as though the viciousness of a few minutes ago has invigorated her.
‘You know exactly what I mean.’
Annabelle shrugs and lifts her hands, palms facing upwards in a gesture of supplication.
‘I honestly have no idea. I just know that everything I do seems to annoy you in some way and I’m on the verge of giving up altogether. Apparently nothing I do can ever be good enough. You see,’ Annabelle shifts on her feet, directing her next comment to Jake, ‘this is exactly what I’ve been telling you about.’
So there have been countless conversations about her behind her back, Kate thinks. Untold opportunities to sow the seeds of suspicion and mistrust. How Annabelle must have enjoyed the manipulation, placing her chips on green baize like a gambler who is cheating the house. She can imagine it all now: how Annabelle, with her evangelical zeal for ‘family’ and the genetic importance of its biology, must have plotted carefully to exclude Kate and bring Marisa into the fold; how she has probably been telling her son that Kate shouldn’t visit, in order to avoid upsetting the surrogate; how she no doubt told Marisa all sorts of things about Kate’s unfit mental state.
‘What’s she been telling you?’ Kate asks Jake, her chin jutting upwards.
He opens his mouth to speak but no words come out. He looks hapless and lost, like the small boy his mother still wishes he was. Annabelle’s power over him is more firmly embedded than Kate ever imagined. She sees now that he is scared of her. That he needs Kate to stand up to her for him.
‘Annabelle,’ Kate says. ‘It’s over. The game’s up. You’ve been found out.’
‘What nonsense—’
‘And if I have anything to do with it, you’ll never see your grandson.’ The words gather and brew with a boiling ferocity. ‘I won’t let you get near him, you poisonous old witch.’
Annabelle takes two steps towards her, hands knotted into fists, teeth bared. For a moment, Kate thinks she’s going to punch her but Chris leaps to his feet, knocking his drink to the floor and rests his hand lightly on Annabelle’s elbow.
‘Come now,’ he says, trying to sit her down as if to avoid an unsightly fracas.
Annabelle bats away his hand.
‘Leave it,’ she says, spitting out the words. Chris sits back down and his face looks as crumpled as his shirt. He raises his eyebrows at Kate and she knows this is his way of apologising, but it’s not enough. None of it is enough to compensate for how malicious Annabelle has been, how odiously superior and unfriendly since the first day they met.
‘You told me, in the kitchen, that Jake and Marisa were better off without me,’ Kate says. ‘That Marisa’s the biological mother. That I’ve been impossible and it’s no wonder Jake’s been spending so much time here behind my back.’
A beat of silence. Kate’s cheeks are hot. Chris, lifting the glass from the floor, suspends his arm mid-air. Jake walks towards her, his face pale.
‘Kate, I—’
‘I don’t want to hear it right now,’ she says.
He stands awkwardly in the middle of the room, and she keeps staring at Annabelle, refusing to look away from that blue, blue gaze. Annabelle blinks. Kate thinks she’s going to cry, but then Annabelle tilts her head to one side, showing off the white vulnerability of her neck. She is looking out of the window to the front garden and the driveway and the thinning patch of woodland and then the room is filled with a strange sound, like a rustling of leaves or a rushing of water, and Kate realises with horror that Annabelle is laughing. Her laughter is loud and potent and jarring against the quiet. Annabelle’s eyes are unmoving. They are silvery, glinting, dead-fish eyes. She islaughing but the laughter does not reach the rest of her face and this makes her more frightening than she was before.
‘What utter nonsense,’ Annabelle says. ‘Jake, I’ve been trying to tell you for some time that I’ve been worried about Kate’s mental health, haven’t I? What further proof do you need?’
