‘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 shell-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 impassioned condemnation of Angel to the class. He’s being a fucking 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. Hell 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 fiancé – 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.