In a Dark, Dark Wood

I shut my eyes, feeling a single tear trace down the line of my nose. I don’t know why I’m crying. It’s not relief. I don’t think it’s even grief for James any more. Maybe it’s just fury and frustration at the waste of it all, anger at myself for not realising sooner, for being so stupid.

And yet, what then? If I had noticed? Would it have been me, lying with my guts splattered across the blond wood and the frosted glass?

‘I’ll leave you,’ Lamarr says softly, and she gets up, the plastic leather of the chair creaking. ‘I’ll come back tomorrow with a colleague. We’ll take your formal statement, if you’re up to it.’

I don’t speak, I only nod, with my eyes still tight shut.

After she’s gone there is silence, broken only by a soap theme tune filtering through the wall. I sit and listen to it, and to the breaths I draw in and out of my nose.

And then, into the middle of the calm, there’s a knock at the door.

I open my eyes at once, assuming it’s Lamarr come back, but it’s not. There’s a man outside. For a second my heart flip-flops, and then I realise it’s Tom.

‘Knock-knock,’ he says, putting his head around the door.

‘Come in,’ I say. My voice is croaky.

He shuffles inside. His expression is diffident, unsure of his welcome. He looks pale, and far from the groomed urbanisto I’d met just a few days before. His checked shirt is crumpled and has some kind of stain on it. But I can tell from his expression that I must look even worse myself. The black eyes are fading to yellow and brown, but they’re still shocking if you haven’t seen them.

‘Hi, Tom,’ I say. I pull the hospital gown up, where it’s slipped down my shoulder and he smiles, the stiff, frozen smile of someone whose social graces have temporarily deserted them.

‘Look, I have to get this off my chest,’ he blurts at last. ‘I thought it was you. I mean there was all that stuff about your past with James, and then when the police started on about your phone and the texts, I just assumed …’ He trails off. ‘I’m … I’m very sorry.’

‘It’s OK,’ I say. I gesture to the chair beside the bed. ‘Look, sit down. Don’t worry about it. The police thought it was me too, and they weren’t even there.’

‘I’m so sorry,’ he repeats, with a crack in his voice, as he sits awkwardly, hugging his knees. ‘I just … I never thought …’ He stops, and then sighs. ‘Do you know, Bruce never liked her. He loved James. I mean, really loved him, even though they had their ups and downs. But he never had much time for Clare. When I rang him last night and told him everything that’s happened he said, “I’m shocked, but I’m not surprised. She never stopped acting, that girl.”’

We sit in silence for a while as I ponder Bruce’s words, the judgement of a man I’ve never met on one of my oldest friends. And I realise he’s right. Clare never stopped acting. Even as a small child she was acting a part, the part of a good friend, the part of the perfect student, the ideal daughter, the glamorous girlfriend. And I realise, suddenly, that perhaps that’s why I found it so hard to reconcile the Clare I knew with these other people. Because she was a different person to each of us. What will happen to her, I wonder? Will a jury convict anyone so charming, so kind, so very, very beautiful?

‘I wonder …’ I say – and then stop.

‘What?’ Tom asks.

‘I keep thinking, what if I hadn’t said yes? To the hen night, I mean. I so nearly didn’t come.’

‘I don’t know,’ Tom says slowly. ‘Nina and I were talking about the same thing last night. The way I see it, you weren’t the point of all this. The point was James. You were just the icing on the cake.’

‘So you mean …’ I’m silent, working it out, and he nods.

‘I think if you hadn’t been there, it would have been one of us instead.’

‘It would have been Flo,’ I say sadly. ‘She sent the text, after all.’

Tom nods. ‘It wouldn’t have been hard for Clare to twist the truth a bit, start saying she was afraid of Flo, that Flo was jealous of James, acting irrationally. The worst thing is, we’d probably have backed her up.’

‘Have you seen Flo?’ I ask.

‘I tried,’ he says. ‘They aren’t letting anyone in. I think … I’m not sure …’

He trails off. We both know what he’s not saying.

‘I’m going back to London tonight,’ he says at last. ‘But it would be great to keep in touch.’ He fishes in his wallet and pulls out a thick, glossy card, embossed with Tom Deauxma and his mobile and email.

‘I’m sorry,’ I say, ‘I don’t have a card, but if you’ve got a pen …’

He holds out his phone and I type my email address into it and watch while he sends me a blank email.

‘There,’ he says at last, standing up. ‘Well, I’d better get on the road. Take care of yourself, Shaw.’

‘I will.’

‘How are you getting back to London?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘I do,’ says a voice from the door. I turn and there is Nina, lounging in the door frame, an unlit cigarette between her lips. She speaks around it, like a dime-store detective. ‘She’s coming with me.’

35

HOME. SUCH A small word, and yet, when I close the door of my tiny flat behind me and lock the door, I feel a spreading flood of relief that seems too huge to be encompassed by those four letters.

I am home. I am home.

Jess drove us back. She came all the way up from London to pick up me and Nina, and take us home. When they got to my road they offered to come in, help me carry my case up the three flights of stairs, but I said no.

‘I’m looking forward to being alone,’ I said, and it was true. And I knew that they were looking forward to being alone too – alone together. I’d seen the quiet affectionate gestures on the long drive, Nina’s hand resting in Jess’s lap, Jess rubbing Nina’s knee as she changed gear. But I didn’t feel excluded – it wasn’t that.

I just never knew how much I loved my own space until now.

Flo died a few hours after I saw Tom – three days after she’d taken the overdose. Nina was right about that. And right, too, that she’d changed her mind by the end. I never saw her, but Nina visited her, and listened while she cried, and talked, and planned for the future and what she’d do when she left hospital. Her parents were with her when she died. I don’t know if it was peaceful – Nina wouldn’t tell me, which makes me think not.

I sigh and let my case fall to the floor. I am tired, and parched, and stiff from the long drive.

I open up the coffee maker, pour in the water, and fold the filter paper just so. Then I open up my glass coffee jar and sniff the grounds. They’re a week old, but still fresh enough to make the inside of my nose sing.

The sound the machine makes as it percolates is the sound of home, and the scent of the steaming grounds is the smell of home, and then at last I curl my battered body on the bed, my still-packed case on the rug, and I take a long, slow sip. The winter sun is filtering through the rattan blinds, and the traffic below makes a soft roar, too far away to disturb, more like the sound of the sea on a shore.

I think of that glass house, far away, in the stillness of the forest, with the birds swooping past and the woodland animals padding quietly through the garden. I think of its blank glass walls, reflecting the dark shapes of the trees, and the moonlight filtering through.

Flo’s aunt is selling, apparently. Flo’s parents told Nina. Too much blood spilt, too many memories. And she said she was planning to burn the planchette, when the police released it.

That’s the one part I don’t understand. The seance.

Everything else was necessary. Everything else was part of the plan. But the ouija board, and that creepy, creepy message?

I can still see it now, looping and scrolling across the page.

M m mmmmuurderrrrrrrrrrrrrer

Lamarr thought it was deliberate, all part of the plan to unnerve everyone, get them sufficiently on edge so that when the back door swung open, we’d be more inclined to panic, and react to a suggestion to get out the gun.