‘I know you were. You don’t need to convince me. I’m on your side.’
‘Now you are,’ Flora mutters.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Nothing.’ Her face twists, and I see how much she wishes she hadn’t said it. She takes her glass of water over to one of the grey sofas and sits down. ‘You didn’t know, and you couldn’t have rescued me and the kids even if you had. I couldn’t rescue us. It was crazy of me to think you might be able to, but I couldn’t stop hoping. I thought, “Surely she’ll suspect something’s wrong, and—”’ She breaks off with a shrug. ‘I don’t know what I thought you could do, but I had to cling to something.’
‘And I did nothing,’ I say, my words falling like stones. ‘I decided you’d lost interest in me because suddenly you were rich, and I gave as good as I got – that’s how I thought of it. I saw you withdrawing from our friendship, took it personally and did the same. I’m so sorry, Flora.’
‘You’re here now.’ She almost smiles.
‘I felt so guilty, too, for cutting Georgina out of the photo.’
‘When I saw that, my first thought was that maybe you and Lewis … but then I told myself you’d never collude with him to hurt me. Then I remembered you’d had a miscarriage, and realised how hard it must have been for you to have me turn up with a baby I’d told you nothing about, and I forgave you straight away. I hope I said so.’
‘You have now. We can’t change the past, Flora. We need to—’
‘I so nearly didn’t send you our new address postcard when we moved to Wyddial Lane,’ she talks over me, staring out through the window at the pool terrace. ‘Lewis told me not to. Thank God I did. I’m glad you found me eventually, even if there’s nothing we can do. You tried. That means something.’
Her mournful tone worries me. She sounds as if she’s given up.
‘I’m still trying, Flora – present tense – but you need to tell me everything. You woke up, Georgina was dead, Lewis was saying you’d rolled over, drunk, and smothered her. What happened after that?’
‘Threats. Lots and lots of threats. I wasn’t allowed to have you in my life any more, or my parents. You and they were the people Lewis feared most. He knew that if I broke down and told anyone what a monster he was, it’d be them or you that I’d tell. You were easy to shake off. You disappeared as smoothly as if you’d helped draft Lewis’s master plan. My parents.’ She flinches. ‘It was the second worst moment of my life, telling them our relationship was over. Lewis did the talking. He wasn’t fazed by it at all. It was just something that had to happen. The first of many things.’
‘Tell me,’ I say.
‘There’s no point. It’s over.’
‘What do you mean?’ The words spill out of me in a panic.
I hear Lewis’s voice behind me. ‘You’ll see what she means if you turn around.’
26
He’s holding a gun. He points it first at Flora, then at me.
No. Please, no. This can’t be real.
‘Hey, Beth,’ he says casually, smiling the same way he did when he came out to greet me at VersaNova this morning. The suit and tie have gone. He’s wearing black tracksuit bottoms, brown boots, a black hoody. Apart from the boots, he’s dressed like one of Ben’s friends.
Or like someone about to commit a crime, using the weapon in his hand.
‘You didn’t think I’d have someone at the Marriott, ready to follow you wherever you went?’ Lewis asks me. ‘I like to cover all bases. I’d have thought you might anticipate that.’
My mind feels as if it’s falling down and down and down. I don’t want it to land, don’t want to look at where it’s heading.
The gun can’t be real. Fake ones must be as easy to come by here as real ones.
Don’t think like that, idiot. Believe it’s real. Act like it’s real.
Flora hasn’t reacted to his arrival at all. She must have seen him come into the house behind me. Yet she didn’t show any shock, or even surprise. Suddenly, I understand why.
‘You knew,’ I say to her. ‘That’s why you started sounding like you’d given up. How did you know he was here?’
‘She saw me from the window,’ says Lewis, pointing to the glass part of the kitchen wall. ‘My wife is excellent at giving up, Beth. Yeah, you heard that right. My wife. She never married Kevin. She and I never divorced. And she might be known as Jeanette Cater when she’s hanging around Nowheresville, England, but legally her name’s still Flora Braid.’ He balls his free hand into a fist, raises it and spreads his fingers wide. ‘Blows your mind, huh?’
My mind has been blown since I first saw Flora on Wyddial Lane with two children who seemed not to have aged in twelve years. I can’t say any of this. All I can do is think about the gun.
‘You, Beth, are terrible at giving up,’ says Lewis. ‘I’m never going to tell anyone the story of how and why I killed you today, and not only for all the obvious reasons. Imagine if I told my employees a story about two best friends …’ – he moves the gun to indicate me and Flora – ‘… one of whom always gives up and the other who never does, and it turns out that it’s the determined, brave optimist who gets shot in the head, while the defeatist coward walks away without a scratch. That’s not a message that packs a great motivational punch, is it?’
‘You’re not going to kill me,’ I tell him. My mouth is numb. The words sound as if they’re coming from a hundred miles away. He can’t do it. He must know that. I have children who need me to be alive.
Lewis sounds reluctant to correct me when he says, ‘I am going to kill you, but I’ll say this before I do: I admire you. More than that – since I know my good opinion of you won’t count for much – I’d say it’s an objective fact that you’re an admirable person. Whereas there’s nothing admirable about Flora. If I’d married you instead of her, maybe I wouldn’t have had to …’ He stops and shakes his head. ‘But I never would have. You’re not physically attractive enough.’
‘Don’t, Lewis,’ Flora says quietly.
‘Don’t insult her looks or don’t kill her? Which? Aww.’ He feigns sympathy. ‘What, tongue-tied now, are you? You were doing so well: I made threats, you were saying, after Georgina died. Lots of threats. Go on.’ Keeping the gun pointed at me, Lewis walks over to a white sofa, sits down and puts his feet up on the low table in front of it. ‘Finish the story if you want to.’
‘What’s the point?’ she mutters.
‘Beth, tell her what the point is.’
My throat closes. I can’t breathe.
‘I’ll tell her, then,’ says Lewis. ‘You want to know everything. Everything Flora and I know, you want to know it too. That’s what this has been about, your whole little crusade. Right?’
‘I want to help Flora and all of her children who can still be helped,’ I manage to say.
‘That’s sweet. And not true. Yeah, you wouldn’t mind helping, but that’s not what this is about for you. It’s about your need to know. To make sense of what you saw, and everything that’s happened. There’s nothing wrong with that. Intellectual curiosity’s a good thing. A great thing, actually. Flora …’ Lewis gestures with his head. ‘Finish telling your story. It’ll be cathartic for you to unburden yourself – all the therapy you’ve not had, all these years? Now’s your chance. And then you’ll be able to go back to your life in England with a different attitude. A better one.’