Isla’s phone vibrated across the floor, continuing to blare out its ringtone, Trevor’s name on the screen like a danger sign.
She reached for it, her mind whirring. Why was he calling? Could he fill in some of the torturous missing pieces that kept her awake at night?
Before she could think too much, she pressed answer.
‘Isla? Isla, is that you?’ His voice was as soft as ever, his Scottish accent stronger than she remembered. ‘Can we talk? Please.’
‘What do you want?’ She couldn’t hide the angst in her voice, the slight croak of sleep.
‘They gave me my phone back, and I knew I had your number. I just wanted to call, talk to you. Explain. I feel I owe you that much.’
‘You owe me nothing, Trevor. You weren’t to know.’ A sharp pain dug her forehead, a swelling in her throat and scalding tears settled behind her eyes. She was regretting picking up already. She didn’t need this. ‘There’s nothing to say.’
‘I just want you to know how sorry I am. For you to understand.’
‘It’s not your fault.’ She ran her fingers through Luna’s fur, trying to find comfort in the smooth softness, but finding none. ‘You didn’t know what she would do.’
There was a pause – a long pause – and a bubble of fear rose in Isla’s chest. Surely he hadn’t known.
‘No, I didn’t know. But I feel . . . I don’t know . . . in some small way responsible.’
‘Responsible?’ Isla’s heartbeat quickened. She glanced at the door. Jack would be home soon.
‘Can I try to explain? Tell you how it happened?’
It was as though he needed to offload. Ease his conscience?
‘Will you listen, Isla? Please?’
‘OK,’ she said, her voice so quiet. Maybe it would help in some small way to know. Perhaps.
He drew in a breath. ‘I met Sara again a while back.’ It was as though he was about to tell his life story. ‘She got a job at Tomlins, and we just sort of clicked. We always got on well at uni, but when I met her again it was different . . . ’ He sucked in a sigh. ‘I really liked her. She was funny, beautiful . . . she reminded me of you.’
‘Don’t, Trevor.’
‘No. Sorry, I didn’t mean that.’
‘Just get on with it,’ she said, dashing a tear from her cheek.
‘We had so much in common. Although, looking back, I suppose even at the start there was something not quite right under the surface. A desperate need to be loved, a fear I would let her down. I suppose I’d been a bit like that myself once.’
‘Where are you going with this, Trevor?’ Isla said, uncomfortable that he was still jabbing at their past.
‘All was good between us, until her father killed himself. That day changed her. It was as though a switch flicked in her head. She’d thought when her mother died that he would turn to her, but he never did. And then he took his own life. His loss sent her reeling. But the worst part was he never even mentioned her in his note. Only that he couldn’t live without her mother.’
Isla’s mind travelled back to that awful night. This wasn’t new news. ‘They’ll think you didn’t care about them at the very end. Just like my father never cared about me.’
‘I tried picking up the pieces, suggested she should see a counsellor or something,’ Trevor was saying. ‘But her pain changed her. She became obsessive, checking my mobile, insisting I was having an affair. She confronted women in shops and restaurants just for looking at me. She told me she would rather die than lose me. I stopped loving her, Isla, but I’d kind of accepted the way things were. Some sort of Stockholm syndrome, maybe . . . ’
‘No, you didn’t love your captor, Trevor.’ Isla tried to hide the desperation in her voice. ‘You were just weak.’
‘OK, yeah, I asked for that. I was pathetic. Even now I can’t explain why I stayed. But the moment I saw you on the train, everything changed.’
Isla felt sick. This was too much to take in. ‘So you told an unstable woman that you loved me?’
‘No . . . no it wasn’t like that. The irony here is I don’t even love you, Isla.’ She heard him swallow hard.
‘You lied . . . ?’
‘No, no . . . well not exactly, I loved talking to you. That brief time we spent together was the most normal interaction I’d had with a woman in over a year. It was great seeing you, and I realised how messed up my relationship with Sara was. Being with you made me see I had to find the balls to leave her.’
‘So you told her you loved me to get away from her?’ Anger bubbled. All of this – all of this, and you didn’t even love me.
‘It wasn’t like that. I got pretty pissed after seeing you, knocking back wine as I waited for her to come home. Before she’d taken off her coat, I told her I’d seen you on the train, and we’d swapped numbers. I told her what you’d been through, that I still loved you.’ He paused for a moment. ‘She began sobbing, clinging to me. Begging me to stay. Threatening to take her own life. I told her you were with someone, and I knew I couldn’t be with you, but I couldn’t be with her either, knowing I loved you. It just came out, my words taking on a drunken life of their own, and it didn’t matter if they were true or not; it was my escape, my bid for freedom. I was desperate, Isla. But you have to believe me, I’m so, so sorry.’
‘Stop saying sorry.’ Isla battled her tears. Every painful, dreadful moment she’d been through was because Sara had thought Trevor loved her, yet he never had. ‘You knew Sara was unstable, but you sent her after me,’ she said, wishing her voice sounded stronger.
‘I didn’t know, Isla. She was messed up, yes, and, yeah, our relationship was pretty toxic, but I never dreamt . . . ’ He let out a sigh. ‘You see things on documentaries, on TV and films – read novels, but you never expect anyone you know to be that damaged. That deranged. I just wanted out. I didn’t know she would come after you – you have to believe me.’
‘Well, newsflash, Trevor, she did.’ Her voice trailed off. Helpless. With trembling fingers, she ended the call before he could say any more.
At first, she was silent, her body numb, cheeks cold with tears, her brain trying to process everything. But the pain rose like a volcano erupting. She covered her mouth, as a twisted, hysterical laugh escaped her lips, and Luna jumped from her lap, glaring back with frightened eyes as she raced from the room. Isla knew she sounded quite mad. Perhaps she was. Perhaps this time she really was going crazy. Perhaps this time they would put her in a cushioned cell where she would scream and scream and scream until she lost the will to scream any more. Perhaps she and Sara were more alike than she realised.
She pinged her rubber band. Crying out as it stung her wrist, blood trickling from the shattered scab. Was she finally broken?
She turned her phone over in her hands. She would call Jack. Tell him about Trevor. But then she couldn’t keep putting him through it. He would be happier without her. She’d known that for a long time now.
She put down her phone, and, with a yank, tugged free her engagement ring and placed it into the palm of her hand, the light from the lamp glancing off the diamond. She couldn’t let Jack see her go crazy.
He hadn’t talked about their engagement since they’d returned from Sweden. Perhaps not wanting to put her under any more pressure, or maybe the thought of being with her for ever wasn’t what he wanted any more. She couldn’t blame him. She wasn’t the woman he fell in love with.
She clenched her fingers around the ring, nails digging in her flesh, as tears rolled down her face. She’d put Jack through hell when he proposed. Not committing – confusing him – a whirlpool of mixed emotions swimming in her head that she hadn’t been able to control.
But the doubts hadn’t been about Jack. A cliché really – it’s not you, it’s me. It’s me. It’s still me. It has always been me.
She’d wanted to tell him the moment she’d feared for her sanity, the day she got back from Canada and someone – Sara – had followed her. She’d wanted to tell him from the second she’d thought Carl Jeffery could be free that she was scared she would become the person she’d been after the attack.
‘I’m not good enough for you, Jack,’ she’d wanted to say. ‘If I’m losing my mind, you need to go – leave – get out of my life – not walk me down the aisle.’ He was far too good for her – he deserved better.
But she’d stayed silent. Something had stopped her from pushing him away. Her intense love for him had always won through, battling against the darkness – the thought of losing him too much to bear.
Now, she placed the ring on the table, and pulled the cuffs of her cardigan over her hands and dried her cheeks.
They’d been so happy at first. She’d never dreamed she would get over Carl Jeffery, but when Jack appeared in her life, he’d made that happen. He’d saved her.
She stared at the ring for some moments. Could Jack save her again? Was there any way back?
She knew the old Isla was inside her somewhere. She could feel her sometimes. A small bright spark would flicker and dance in the darkness, and she would try to coax her out, want to swing her round, tell her everything would be OK. But it was always fleeting. Old Isla would disappear almost before she arrived, leaving a heavy sadness that would drag her back under.
‘It’s over, Jack,’ she rehearsed, a fragile whisper into the silence. Words she didn’t want to say, but knew she had to.
Her eyes grew heavy once more. They were almost closed, when the front door opened.
‘Jack,’ she said, as he approached, overwhelmed with love and relief at the sight of him.
‘Are you OK?’ He leant over and touched her face, concern in his eyes. Lately, her cheeks were always puffy, eyes swollen. She was a mess. ‘Did you go out with Roxanne?’
She nodded. ‘Yeah, yeah I did. How was your dad?’
‘Good, yeah.’ He dropped down next to her, and kissed her softly on the lips. ‘We’re getting on pretty well. He’d love to meet you.’ He paused. ‘When you’re ready.’
A silence hung between them for a short while, before he stood up once more. ‘I could murder a glass of wine. Fancy one?’
‘Yes,’ she said, picking up the ring and pushing it into her pocket as he walked away. She would talk to him. Tell him he would be better off without her. Soon.
He opened the fridge and grabbed a bottle, and two glasses from the cupboard, before heading back to the sofa. He filled the glasses and handed Isla one.
They sat in silence once more, snippets of Trevor’s phone call darting around her head. Sara had threatened Trevor with suicide if he didn’t stay with her. Had she always been close to the edge herself? Was that why she took her own life the night she attacked Isla?
‘Why do you think Sara killed herself?’ she said, running her finger around the rim of her glass. ‘Do you think she knew Trevor would never love her, once he found out what she’d done?’
Jack shrugged, not meeting her eye.
‘Maybe it hit her what she’d become.’ She paused, looking at his profile. ‘Jack?’
He was silent for a beat too long, before shrugging once more and saying, ‘Sara was evil, Isla.’
‘Her parents messed her up. Trevor walked out.’
‘It’s no excuse.’ He bit down hard on his lip. ‘Lots of parents mess their kids up, and some go a bit AWOL. But Sara didn’t just lose the plot, Isla. She was evil. Calculating. The lengths she went to to hurt you were beyond cruel.’ He tensed his fingers around the stem of his glass. ‘She got exactly what she deserved.’ He turned and they linked eyes. Isla blinked away a mental image of Sara swinging from the noose. Memories of Jack’s anger when he talked about Carl Jeffery flashed into her mind. If I could get hold of that bastard, I’d rip his head off, and fuck the consequences.
‘Everything is going to be OK,’ he said, putting his arm around her shoulders and pulling her to him. ‘She’s better off dead.’
His words over the last six weeks, like everyone else’s, had held little comfort. But now something shifted.
‘You killed her,’ she whispered into his chest. It wasn’t a question, and she wasn’t even sure he’d heard her, but suddenly it didn’t matter. All Jack’s actions since they’d met had proved how much he loved her and always would.
She waited until he’d leant over to refill their glasses, and slipped her ring back on.