In A Dark, Dark Wood Part 30

I shut my eyes and the picture of James swims in front of my closed lids, dying in my arms. Is this the picture that I'm going to see when I close my eyes for the rest of my life?

'Text ...' he gasps, 'text, Leo,' and there is blood in his lungs.

And then suddenly, amid the swimming haze of memories and tangled suspicion something catches.

I know what James was saying. What he was trying to say.

I put down the mug.

I know what happened. And I know why James had to die.

32.

OH MY G.o.d, I've been so stupid. I can't believe how stupid for ten years, I never even noticed. I sit there, stock still, running through all the what-ifs how different everything could have been if I'd only realised what was sitting in front of my face, all those years ago.

'Lee?' Clare says. She is looking at me, her face the picture of concern. 'Lee, are you OK? You look ... you don't look well.'

'Nora. My name is Nora,' I say hoa.r.s.ely.

For ten years. For ten years that f.u.c.king text has been engraved on my heart, and I never even noticed.

'Are you sure?'

'"Lee",' I say to Clare. She takes a gulp of tea and stares at me over the mug, her beautiful, narrow brows drawn into a puzzled frown. '"Lee",' I repeat, '"I'm sorry but this is your problem, not mine. Deal with it. And don't call me again. J."'

'What?'

'"Lee."'

'What the h.e.l.l are you on about?'

'Lee. He never called me Lee. James never called me Lee.'

For a minute she stares at me in utter incomprehension and I am reminded, all over again, what an amazing actress she was. Is. It shouldn't have been James on the stage. It should have been Clare. She is amazing.

And then she sets down her tea and gives a rueful grimace. 'Jesus. It was a long time ago, Lee.'

It's not an admission not quite. But I know her well enough to know that it might as well be. She's not protesting any more.

'Ten years. I'm slow,' I say bitterly. Bitter, not just because my mistake ruined my own life, but because if I'd been a little quicker on the uptake, James might still be alive. 'Why did you do it, Clare?'

She reaches out her hand to me, I flinch away, and she says, 'Look, I'm not saying what I did was right I was young and it was stupid. But, Lee, I did it for the best. You'd have been s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g up both your lives. Look, I went round to see him that afternoon the guy was s.h.i.tting himself he wasn't ready to be a dad. You weren't ready to be a mum. But I knew between the two of you, neither of you would have the guts to take the decision.'

'No,' I say. My voice is shaking.

'You wanted it to happen, both of you.'

'No!' It comes out like a sob.

'You can deny it all you want,' she says softly, 'but you were the one that walked away, and he let you. All it would have taken was one text, one message, one call the truth would have come out. But between you, you couldn't even manage that. The fact is, he wanted out he was just too much of a coward to make a break for it himself. I did it for the best.'

'You're lying,' I say at last. My voice is hoa.r.s.e and choked. 'You don't care you never cared. You just wanted James and I was in the way.'

I remember I remember that day in the school hall, the hot sun streaming in through the tall gla.s.s windows, and Clare saying laconically, 'I'm going to have James Cooper.'

But instead, he became mine.

'He found out, didn't he?' I stare at her pale face, her draggled hair silver-white in the moonlight. 'About the text. How?'

She sighs.

And then at last she speaks what sounds like the truth.

'I told him.'

'What?'

'I told him. We were having a discussion about honesty, and marriage. He said that before we got married he wanted to get something off his chest. He asked, could he tell me something and would I forgive him? And I said, yes, anything, absolutely anything. I said I loved him, that he could tell me anything. And he told me that at that party where we met up again, his friend had been interested in me we'd spent all night flirting, I remember. I gave this friend my number at the end of the night and James said that he found the piece of paper in his friend's pocket, and kept it himself. He told his friend that I wasn't interested and instead, he texted me, said that he got my number off Julian, and did I want to go out for a drink.'

She sighs and stares out of the window.

'He said it had been eating at him all these years,' she carries on. 'That our relationship had started with a lie, that it was his friend who should have ended up with me. But he said that Julian was a womaniser, and he'd done it partly for selfish reasons, but partly for me. He couldn't bear for Julian to string me along, screw me, and then dump me. He was expecting me to be angry but as he talked, all I could think was that he'd lied and cheated to get me, bent his own scruples. You know what James is like ... was like.'

I nod. The movement makes my head swim, but I know what she means. James was a contradictory mix an anarchist with his own rigid moral code.

'It was strange,' Clare is speaking slowly now. I think she's almost forgotten about me. 'He thought his confession would make me love him less. But it didn't it only made me love him more. I realised what he'd done was for me, for love of me. And I realised that the same was true of me. That I had lied out of love for him. And I thought ... if I can forgive him ...'

I can see it. I can see her twisted logic. And her one-upmanship: you have done this for me, I have done worse for you. I love you even more.

But she fatally misunderstood James.

I sit, trying to imagine his face as she confessed what she'd done. Did she try to justify it to him, as she did to me? He wasn't ready to be a dad she was absolutely right. But that wouldn't have swayed James. He would have seen only the cruelty of the deception.

'What did you say to him?' I say at last. I am light-headed with tiredness and my body feels strange and disconnected, my muscles like wool. Clare looks just as bad her wrists seem thin enough to snap.

'What do you mean?'

'You must have told him something else. Otherwise he would have rung me. What did you say?'

'Oh.' She rubs her temple, hooks back a lock of hair that has fallen over her face. 'I can't remember. I said something about ... you'd told me to tell him you needed time alone that you thought he'd screwed up your life and you didn't want to see him. He shouldn't ring you you'd contact him when you were ready.'

But of course I never did. I went back to school only to take my exams, and ignored him steadfastly. Then I moved away completely.

Part of me wants to smack him for being so stupid, for being taken in so easily. Why didn't he overcome his scruples and just call me? But I know the answer. It's the same reason I never called him. Pride. Shame. Cowardice. And something else something more like sh.e.l.l-shock, that made it easier just to keep on going, not look back. Something momentous had happened in our lives, something we were totally unequipped to deal with. And we were both dazed from the fallout, trying not to think too much, feel too much. Easier just to shut down.

'What did he say?' I manage at last. My throat is sore and croaky and I take another gulp of tea. It tastes even worse cold, but perhaps the sugar and caffeine will help keep me awake until morning, until the police come. I am so tired so very, very tired. 'Afterwards, I mean. When he found out.'

Clare sighs. 'He wanted to call off the wedding. And I begged and pleaded I said he was being like Angel in Tess of the D'Urbervilles you know, when Angel confesses to adultery but then can't bear it when Tess says she had Alex's baby.'

We studied the book at GCSE. I can still remember James's impa.s.sioned condemnation of Angel to the cla.s.s. He's being a f.u.c.king hypocrite! he shouted, and got sent out for swearing in front of a teacher.

'He said he needed time to think, but that the only way he could ever even try to forgive me was if I told you the truth. So I told him I'd invited you to my hen party, so that I could tell you then.' She laughs then, unsteadily, like someone suddenly seeing the point of a joke. 'It's just occurred to me how ironic it is: I always thought hen-dos were completely lame, and James spent ages trying to persuade me to have one and in the end he was the one who persuaded me, just not for the reason he thought. If he hadn't kept going on about it, I'd probably never even have thought of all this.'

I understand now. I understand completely.

Clare could never be in the wrong. Someone else always had to take the fall. Someone else had to take the blame.

Did James ever really know her? Or did he just love some illusion of Clare, an act that she presented to him? Because I know, from twenty years of knowing Clare, that his plan was never going to work. h.e.l.l would freeze over before Clare would admit to something like that. Not just because she would be in the wrong to me but because she would be in the wrong to everyone, for ever. I could not be expected to keep quiet about what happened it would have all come out: ten years of lying and deception and, most humiliating of all, the fact that Clare Cavendish had had to resort to this to get her man.

She must have known, too, that James's decision was on a knife-edge. I don't know what he said to Matt, but it was clear that if he was prepared to talk about his distress to other people, it must go very deep indeed. And he'd made no promises to Clare only said that he might be able to forgive her if she confessed.

I didn't think, knowing James, that he would have succeeded.

No. Clare had everything to lose by being honest, and nothing to gain.

She had two options: tell the truth, and expose herself, or refuse to go along with James's plan, and lose her fiance and then the truth would have had to come out anyway. Either way, she would be destroyed, and the image she had built up so carefully over so many years the image of a good friend, a loving girlfriend, and a caring, honourable person would be shattered.

I know how hard it is to walk away from your past and start again and Clare's life is happy and glittering and successful. She must have looked at all she'd done, and built and won, and balanced that against a lie.

She could come out of this destroyed or she could kill James and walk away a tragic and inspiringly brave widow, ready to start again.

James had to die his execution was regretful but necessary.

But mine mine is a punishment. It was not enough that James die. Someone must carry the can for his death. It cannot possibly be Clare's fault, even as an accident.

No, someone else must be to blame. And this time, that someone is me.

Why me? I almost say. But I don't. Because I know.

I stole her man. Ten years ago I came between Clare Cavendish and her rightful property, stealing him out from under her nose while she was too ill to fight for what was hers, and now I have done it again, rising up from the past like a hand from the grave, to come between her and James one last time.

I will not leave this house now, I know that.

Clare cannot afford to let me leave.

My heart is beating very, very hard in my chest, so hard that I feel strange and light-headed, as if I might fall. I stand up, unsteadily, holding my cup, and I stagger and drop it. Clare reaches for it, trying to grab it before it spills, but her gloved fingers fumble on the china, and the cup slips from between her fingers and skitters across the coffee table.

And as the dregs spill out across the gla.s.s top I see ... I see the white residue at the bottom of the cup. Not sugar that had all dissolved. But something else. Something that made the tea taste even worse than usual.

I understand now. I understand my light-headedness. I understand why Clare has said so much, has allowed me to get this far. And I understand, oh G.o.d, I understand the gloves.

She looks down at the cup, and then up at me.

'Oops,' she says. And then she smiles.

33.

FOR A MOMENT I do nothing. I just stand there staring stupidly at the cup, feeling the lethargy in my arms and legs, and the swirling confusion in my head that prevented me from noticing the effects of the drug before. What are they? Painkillers? Sleeping pills?

I stand there, swaying, trying to get myself together. Trying to balance.

And then I stumble towards the door.

I am not quick. I am slow nightmarishly slow.

But as Clare leaps towards me, her battered limbs don't quite obey. Her foot catches in the rug and she comes crashing down, her hip smacking into the wickedly sharp edge of the coffee table. She gives a scream that sets the echoes in the hallway ringing, and makes my already spinning head feel even stranger and I stagger into the hallway.

I am struggling with the lock of the front door the lock that seemed so simple and straightforward just a couple of hours ago. My fingers are slipping the lock won't turn and then I have done it, and I am out, snapping through the flimsy police tape into the blessedly cold, fresh air.

My limbs feel like rubber and my head is sick and dizzy.

But this is what I do. I run. I can do this.

I take a step. And then another. And another and another. And then the forest swallows me up.

It is incredibly, indescribably dark. But I cannot stop.

The air is cold in my face and the shapes of the trees are black against black. They rear out of the chilly dark and I dodge and weave, ducking under branches, my hands held out to protect my face.

Bracken and brambles catch at my shins, ripping at the skin, but my legs are numb and cold and I hardly feel the slashes, only the tearing thorns holding me back.

It is my nightmare. Only this time it's not James I'm trying to save it's myself.

Behind me I hear the slam of a car door, and an engine revving. Full-beam headlights glimmer through the tree trunks, sweeping round in a great curve as the car does a slow U-turn and then begins to b.u.mp down the rutted drive.

The drive goes round in long curves, so as not to climb the hill too steeply. The woodland footpath is direct. If I run fast, I can do this. I can get to the road before Clare. And then what?

But I cannot think about that. My breath sobs between my gritted teeth and I force my shaking muscles to work harder, faster.

I just want to live.

I'm gaining speed. The path runs downhill more steeply here, and my muscles aren't forcing me on now, but trying to check my headlong rush. I leap a fallen branch, and a badger's sett, a dark hole in the pale scattered snow and then, with a suddenness that punches the breath out of me, I smack into a tree.

I fall onto my hands and knees in the snow, my head ringing in agony. My nose is streaming blood I can see it dripping into the snow as I pant and pant, and when I touch Nina's cardigan, the front is dark and soaked with gore. I shake my head, trying to clear the shards and sparks shooting across my vision, and the blood spatters across the clearing.

I can't stop. My only chance is to get to the road before Clare can cut me off. I steady myself, one hand on the tree trunk, trying to overcome the sick dizziness, and then I begin to run again.