Emily falters. “I just think maybe she should stay if she doesn’t want to go—”
“Look, you seem like really nice people, but I’ve not met you once, so I imagine you have no clue what you’re dealing with here.”
He’s making me sound crazy. “You’re making me sound crazy!” I hate how shrill and unanchored my voice sounds. I watch Emily back away again, consider how many years we’ve been apart. How much I might have changed in that time.
“She’s getting help. She’ll get better. I know this is…Sorry, I just…I’m doing my best. Sorry.”
And James keeps apologizing. Even as Emily follows us out to the car, my jacket in her hands. Even as he pushes me into the passenger seat and fishes the keys out of my jacket pocket, gingerly handed over to him from Emily’s hands. Even as I berate myself for letting this friendship go stale. If she could be confident she still knew me, there’s no way she’d let him cart me away like this.
My breath is back in my mouth, and I know I’ve totally fucked this. I’ve fucked this. Because until now, I’ve been a good little actress in front of James, but now I’ve blown my cover. I look nervous, and I wouldn’t look nervous if I wasn’t suspicious of him. He’s going to have questions. He’s going to know something is up. And I don’t have any answers. And I need to be anywhere that isn’t right beside him right now. In the heat of an argument, Chioma accidentally gets pushed to her death. God knows what happens before Jade kills herself. His partners have a habit of turning up dead.
His car door clicks shut. The ignition switches on. I try my door. It’s locked. How is it locked?
The child lock.
The engine revs.
Emily’s face is suddenly outside my window. “My number’s the same. Please text me tomorrow once you’ve slept. Let me know how you are,” she says.
“She’ll be fine.” James.
Emily is forced to take rapid steps back as the car begins to move out of its parking space. We’re on the move, racing through the streets of South London. James’s fury is felt in the speed of the car, throttling around turns. I find myself wondering how he’s tracked me down and kick myself. He has my location on Maps. Idiot.
“What the hell is going on with you?” he manages to say. His voice is smooth and almost sweet, which would calm me if it didn’t feel like the sweetness of cyanide.
I don’t trust what my mouth will say, and so I say nothing.
“The silent treatment? Really, Natalie? What have I done to deserve this?”
He deserves a lot more than the silent treatment, but broken as I am, I’ve no idea how I’m going to get him what he deserves. I’ve made the mistake of thinking I’m someone I’m not again. This doesn’t work. None of it works.
“What?” James throws distrusting looks my way as the car hurtles down another road.
Did I say those last words aloud? I’m losing it. I’m really losing it.
“Natalie, for Christ’s sake!”
It’s so loud I nearly jump out of my skin. He doesn’t apologize, simply keeps the car going, snaking up through West London, eventually joining the M4. I think about texting Will, letting him know what’s happening. Although how do I even describe what’s going on?Hey, my husband’s driving me home…Then I catch the gleam from James’s jacket pocket. My phone, not his. Is it worth snatching it out? Worth the further suspicion this will raise? Not likely.
I stay very still. Perhaps if I’m perfectly still, I can disappear entirely. Perhaps all my problems will disappear entirely. But James’s roughdriving won’t allow for this, each painful collision of my knee with the car door reminding me that I’m very much alive and here.
I’ve already built a picture of Chioma’s face in my mind. Not that I have any details, really, but I can imagine her as clear as anything. She has expressive dark eyes. A cheeky quirk to the way she moves her mouth when she speaks. She’s someone who smiles a lot. Or smiled, I should say. She has fine, dark braids. They’re 1B with a tiny bit of 24 mixed in, creating thin blond streaks.
Jade’s face also floats in and out of my mind’s eye as we continue to hurtle toward home, thick black liner and defiant stare. I want to tell James to slow down, but I’m suddenly scared that even the lightest allusion to what I know will give me away. And so I let myself be bounced around the passenger seat like a rag doll, waiting for us to arrive home.
And when we finally do, James wants to talk.
“Nat, what the hell is going on?”
He’s marching up the stairs behind me, our shoes discarded. I need to do better. He can’t know what I know.
“It was just a bad therapy session,” I say.
I make my way into the bathroom, quickly turn the lock in the door. We never usually lock the door when it’s just the two of us at home. James knocks.
“I need the toilet,” I say, which is true. An insistent stream sounds loudly through the bathroom to confirm this.
When I emerge, he’s waiting for me outside, arms folded.
