‘Luke’s gone to his parents. He’s taken the girls with him.’ I rest my head back against the seat, wondering what he told Hannah and reminding myself to call a bit later. The dark clouds look to be settling in for the night and the tops of the trees sway in the strong wind. As we head towards the sea front, the wind feels even stronger, battering the side of the car.
I pull the sun visor down and look at myself in the vanity mirror. ‘Can we stop at a shop, please?’
‘Sure. What do you need?’
‘A clean dressing.’ I pick at the tape, which is currently holding my crepe bandage turban together. Eventually, I pick enough to get a good grip between my finger and thumb and manage to prise it away. Then, rather unceremoniously, I unwind the bandage, allowing it to spool like spaghetti in my lap, until it reveals a rectangular dressing of about two by three inches. The middle of the dressing has a dark-red, dried bloodstain.
‘Are you sure you should be taking that off?’
‘I’ll be fine.’
Tom draws the car up outside a mini convenience store and runs in to get a clean dressing for me. He returns a few minutes later with a complete first-aid kit. He shrugs. ‘Better safe than sorry. I wasn’t sure what you wanted.’
I smile. ‘Thanks. No doubt there’s something in here that will be useful.’
As we near Tom’s apartment, my phone rings. ‘It’s Leonard,’ I say, showing Tom the screen. I go to answer it, but Tom puts his hand over mine.
‘Don’t give him any clue as to where you are or what you know. We need to work this all out in our heads before we speak to him. You know what he’s like. Before we know it, he’ll have us convinced we’re the insane ones.’
‘Good point.’ I switch the phone to silent. ‘Maybe I should just text to say I’m okay, though. I don’t want them to call the police or anything like that.’
‘It’s up to you.’
I tap out a reply to Leonard saying ‘just gone out with Tom for some fresh air’, with a reassurance that I’ll speak to him later. ‘He was going to sit with Hannah today while the police interviewed her about the accident. Maybe I should speak to him. Just in case.’
‘No!’ The force of Tom’s voice startles me. ‘Later. You can do that later.’
His eyes fix on the road ahead and I sit back in silence, aware that Tom is rather more anxious about it all than he’s letting on. I can see a line of sweat prick above his upper lip. He draws the car into the underground car park and switches off the engine. I can just make out his face in the soft yellow glow from the wall light. He looks at me. ‘Sorry. I didn’t mean to snap. Just a bit jumpy about Leonard, that’s all. Let’s get inside. We can talk properly there.’
I exit the car and follow him over to the lift. I’ve known Tom a long time and his nerves are like steel, so to see him flustered gives me a deep sense of unease.
We enter the lift and, as I rest my hand against my shoulder bag, I feel the vibration of an incoming text message. For some reason I don’t want Tom to know.
When we get upstairs to his apartment, I make my excuses to use the loo, taking my bag and the first-aid kit with me. ‘I’ll just put a new dressing on this cut while I’m at it,’ I call back over my shoulder. I make sure I lock the door and then set about running a bowl of water. I take my phone from my bag and check the message. I’m not surprised to see it’s from Leonard.
Don’t trust him. Phone me. I need to tell you something important.
Chapter 28
‘You okay in there?’ calls Tom from the other side of the door. I almost drop my phone in panic.
‘Yes. Won’t be a moment!’
I delete the message and shove the phone back into my bag.
A few minutes later we’re sitting in the living room and Tom is handing me a glass of wine. ‘Thought you could do with something a bit stronger than a cup of tea.’
‘Thanks.’ I take the wine. To be honest I’m not really in a wine sort of mood, so I take a sip out of politeness and place it on the table next to me. ‘Where’s your laptop, then?’ I ask, looking around.
‘In the spare room. I’ll get it all up and running in a moment.’ Tom sits on the sofa next to me. ‘Are you okay? I mean, really okay?’
‘Yeah, sort of. It’s all a bit surreal at the moment. I’m not quite sure what I am.’ I give a laugh that I don’t really mean. ‘I can’t stop thinking about the accident. It just goes round and round in my head. I keep thinking was there something I could have done to avoid it.’
‘You mustn’t blame yourself. You didn’t do anything wrong.’
‘It all happened so fast.’
‘You know, I’ve been thinking about the accident and I hate to be the one to suggest it, but you don’t think Leonard had anything to do with it, do you?’
‘He wouldn’t do anything to hurt Hannah,’ I say. ‘It was my fault for driving too fast.’
‘Let’s come at it from a different angle.’ Tom looks at me as if there’s a significance to what he’s just said. I shrug, so he continues. ‘What was Leonard doing there? He doesn’t usually turn up at breakfast time, does he?’
‘No, that’s true. Mum said he had some paperwork for her to sign but I think now he might have been there to speak to me before the police did.’
‘What if he had guessed you’d discovered the truth about Martha pretending to be Alice? What if he didn’t want this information to get out? He might have come to the house to warn Martha. Maybe he wanted to talk to her in private and said to meet him down by the gate …’
‘Knowing that I was on my way,’ I finish Tom’s sentence and the thought that Leonard is possibly behind the accident makes me feel sick. ‘But, how could he have timed it so well?’
‘Luck, maybe. You’d already said what flight you’d be back on. It doesn’t take a genius to work out timings.’
‘This is all conjecture. We’ve no proof. I still find it hard to think he engineered it all.’ I wonder if this is because I don’t want to believe it. ‘He wouldn’t harm Hannah. No way.’
‘I’m sure he wouldn’t. It could be just unfortunate that Hannah was there.’
I think back to the accident that is never far from my mind, although calling it an accident doesn’t seem right now. ‘I’m sure Martha tried to push Hannah out of the way. If it hadn’t been for her, I can’t bear to think what might have happened.’ I feel my leg begin to shake at the thought.
Tom rests his hand on my thigh to quell the trembling. ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to upset you but I’m just thinking he’s tying up loose ends. Martha could have already got rid of Alice for him.’
‘She’s not a bag of rubbish,’ I snap, uncomfortable with the way Tom talks about Alice, as if her fate is a foregone conclusion. One that I’m not prepared to fully consider just yet.
‘Sorry, I didn’t mean it like that.’
‘It’s okay. Forget it.’ I try to sound gracious. ‘We need to speak to Martha again. She’s the one who holds the key to everything. She can tell us exactly what happened.’