Isla
Six weeks later
‘Hey, remember when we made lasagne for the first time at uni?’ Roxanne said.
Isla could hear her friend talking, could even make out the words, but she wasn’t computing.
‘How to burn pasta in one easy lesson,’ Roxanne went on, with a forced laugh. ‘And scorchio mince.’
But Isla was trancelike. Thoughts of Sara consumed her, as they had since she got back from Sweden. The efforts the woman had gone to to ruin her life had been so extreme, it made her sick to think about it. Fake Facebook profiles, a blog pretending to be Isla, and the setting up of the reunion only scratched the surface of what she’d done. Truth was, Sara hadn’t even met Ben or Veronica.
Isla had tried so hard to piece it all together. Had Sara chosen the name Andy for her phantom lover, after seeing Isla’s Canadian holiday acquaintance on Facebook? Had she found Isla’s mum’s email address when Sally left her settings open? Isla knew she may never know.
‘Earth to Isla, come in, Isla,’ Roxanne said, waving her hand in front of her friend’s face.
Isla covered her mouth, trying not to cry. ‘Sorry,’ she said through her fingers. ‘I’m really not myself.’
‘No, no of course you’re not, lovely lady.’ She paused. ‘Isla, you do believe me that I never slept with Trevor Cooper, don’t you?’
‘Oh God, Roxanne, of course I do. You don’t have to keep asking. She just made that up to put a wedge between us. And she could never do that.’
But Sara had at the time. She’d planted the doubt, and Isla had sucked it up. And she’d fooled Roxanne and her parents too, led them away from Abisko, by pushing a woman in front of a car in Narvik and planting Isla’s bag on her.
‘Do you want to go home?’ Roxanne asked, looking deep into Isla’s eyes.
Isla nodded and laid down her fork on the bed of chicken and crisp lettuce leaves she hadn’t touched. ‘I’m really not hungry, anyway.’
‘You should eat.’
‘I do eat.’ It came out as a snap. ‘Sorry, sorry . . . I know you’re just being kind . . . I’m so sorry . . . ’
‘You’ve got nothing to be sorry for.’ Roxanne placed her hand over Isla’s. ‘I just thought if we came out for a meal it might help, but it’s clearly not working.’
Isla shook her head. She knew Roxanne wanted to talk. Bring out the pain and swaddle it in so much love that it would suffocate and die. But it was going to take a lot more than that.
‘How did she get the photograph into my room at Abisko?’ Isla whispered. Every little bit of what happened moving around her head like the living dead. ‘How did Sara get it in there?’
‘Probably when the room was being cleaned – housekeepers take little notice of who stays in which room. If Sara popped in when your room was being cleaned, and left the photo, a cleaner wouldn’t have batted an eyelid.’
‘Maybe.’ Isla ran her fingers over the rubber band on her wrist. Her skin was pink and raw, and a scab had formed where she’d drawn blood a few weeks back. Tears itched behind her eyes. It’s way too soon. This was going to take a long time to get over – if she ever could.
Roxanne tilted her head, eyes shimmering – the pitying look. Isla had seen it so many times since Abisko, since she’d appeared on the front cover of newspapers two days on the trot. People had looked at her the way they’d looked at her six years before.
There had been a media storm after Sweden, just as there had been after Australia. Flashing cameras blurring her and her family’s vision as they left the hospital, and later in the UK as they left the airport. Journalists talking on phones; a woman with silky blonde hair, and a rainbow-coloured blouse, from a news channel; a man wearing a blue and white checked blazer she recognised from the TV.
‘Hey, Isla! Why do you think this has happened to you twice?’ one had called, as her parents rushed her to the car.
‘Can you tell us more about Andy?’
‘Are you sleeping with Trevor Cooper?’
‘Is there a connection with Carl Jeffery, Isla? Or are you just unlucky?’
‘Why do you think Sara killed herself?’
‘Any chance of a link to the blog?’
‘Do you think killers are drawn to you, Isla?’
Snappy, clever headlines followed Sweden. Photos of Isla and Jack filled pages. There were pictures of Sara too, at university and more recent ones. Her metamorphosis, they seemed to think, was a story in itself.
There were images of Trevor Cooper too, poor innocent Trevor, whose only guilt seemed to be loving Isla, and the photograph of Isla and the red-headed man sitting outside a café found its way on to the front page. He was Steven Russell, a maths teacher from Stevenage, a father of equally red-headed twins. He’d just happened to sit down at Isla’s table on a busy market day, when she was writing in Hitchin. It wasn’t taken in Canada. Sara had simply snapped them from a distance and cropped out landmarks, and based the fictitious Andy on the man.
Isla felt for Steven Russell, an innocent victim hounded by the press on his way to work, and when out shopping with his wife and children. But then surely Isla was an innocent victim too.
But now Isla’s story was yesterday’s news. The media had moved on to new disasters and tragedies, and she was left with darting memories of that awful night in the cold.
‘I’ll take you home,’ Roxanne said, raising her hand to catch the waiter’s attention. She wasn’t herself either – not really – a faded image of Isla’s crazy, fun-loving friend. It had sucked the life from everyone. They were empty shells on a deserted beach, pecked dry by seagulls.
***
Back at her apartment, Isla didn’t turn on the light. The darkness held an odd kind of relief now; she could hide among the shadows, unnoticed. And the fact she couldn’t open the windows, because of the noisy traffic, felt oddly comforting.
She sat down on the sofa, and Luna jumped onto her lap and curled up. As she stroked her fur, the cat’s purr soothed, and Isla’s eyelids dropped closed. As soon as she drifted into the kind of limbo before sleep took hold, the memories came, haunting, jumbled and frightening. Sara’s mocking face was always so clear, as though it was in the room with her.
Sometimes Isla would startle awake in the early hours, and thrash about, hot and sweating, certain she could hear Sara’s voice, cold and cruel. Other times she felt trapped in her night terrors with no means of escape.
‘Isla, I’m here,’ Jack would always say, pulling her close. Holding her until the sun rose.
The piercing sound of her mobile’s ringtone woke her, and she leant over and flicked on the side lamp. She rubbed her eyes. It was probably Jack, telling her he was on his way home from his father’s.
She picked up her phone, letting out a gasp as she registered the caller, the phone slipping through her shaking fingers and clattering to the floor.