As I fall back, Greg sits up. My pain vanishes as I focus on his eyes – he’s staring, but unfocused, as though he can’t recognize me. His right arm lifts, still clutching the knife as he leans towards me. I roll over onto my side to pull myself up, but no sooner am I on my knees, I feel hands around my calves as Greg pulls me towards him.
‘Let me go!’ I twist around to kick him but my aim is completely off. ‘Greg, it’s me, Marie! What are you doing?’
I reach for a large stone, grab it and throw as hard as I can. It hits the side of his head with a dull thud. His eyes bulge and – still – they stare at me but his arm drops and the knife slides to the ground. Thank God!
‘Greg!’ I say.
It’s the wrong thing to do. It snaps him out of his trance and he lunges forward, his hands grasp my neck. I can’t speak. I grab his fingers – they slacken as I pull them off. I scream. I see someone else . . . Camilla!
Greg turns around. Camilla picks up the knife as I back further away. At first, I think she’s going to throw it in the river and try to run away with me, but a look of utter rage twists her features, her jaw clenches and she grits her teeth. Camilla raises the knife and aims for Greg’s throat. She stabs. He slumps back onto the bank, the knife sticking out. She clasps it tightly with her right hand as if she’s trying to yank it out, to have a fresh go.
‘Stop!’
We both stare as blood oozes onto the soil. A horrible, gasping sound fills my ears. Oh God. It’s horrible. His eyes! I can’t look at his eyes any more. One hand is slumped on his chest as if he was going to try to pull the knife out himself, but gave up.
‘What are you doing?’ I yell.
Camilla’s words tumble out as she struggles to catch her breath. ‘I couldn’t let you come here alone. Louise went to a friend’s for tea, you took so long, I was afraid, I saw you, and him . . .’
We both stand and stare. Birds flutter in the branches, making us both jump. Camilla bends down and picks up the large stone as if she thinks Greg (or someone) is going to attack her. I hold my breath as she holds it above him. There is silence and stillness apart from the running water and a breeze in the trees. She throws the stone into the river.
‘We don’t have long,’ she says.
I still expect Greg to sit back up, splutter, come after us, do something. Nothing. Through the flowing water, I see green moss being tugged downstream, dancing in the current. Stones and debris rest on the sandy bottom. It’s . . . mesmerizingly beautiful.
I pick up the fallen branch and chuck it into the water, watching it float away as innocently as a Pooh stick.
I wish I’d watched more true crime. There’s something more we should be doing to cover our tracks, I know there is. Theft.
‘We have to steal something,’ I say out loud.
Camilla ignores me, remains standing still, eyes wide, staring at Greg. She’s looking at him in hatred, not fear. I grab her by the shoulders and give her a shake.
‘Steal something! We’ve got to take something.’
We both look around.
‘His wallet?’ she says.
I don’t want to go through his pockets because I’ll be sick – I can’t touch him. It comes to me: his camera. It’s easy to find, just inside the entrance to his tent. I shove it in my rucksack and we both turn and walk away as fast as we dare.
The pain in my abdomen is gnawing, vice like.
Camilla stops. ‘The knife!’
I look down at her bare hands, half expecting to see them covered in blood.
‘You’ll have to go back and get it,’ I say.
‘I don’t want to.’
‘You have to. I’m not.’
I bend over and clutch my stomach as I wait.
Halfway back, there is a rushing noise in my ears. I stop to be sick, but nothing comes up.
As we approach the guesthouse, I can’t stop shivering. I’ve read so many stories where this type of thing happens, just one mistake, one wrong turn, and a whole life, or lives, can be completely upended. It can’t be happening to me. I won’t let it.
We go in through the back door.
I pull off Nina’s old wellies. They were too big anyway, I must destroy these, get some new ones of my own, the right size next time. It’s funny how, despite the trauma, my mind is quick to figure out ways to self-preserve.
Still, I throw up into the sink.
Camilla puts the kettle on. My teeth chatter. She gets a throw off the sofa and wraps it around both of us. We both sit there, shivering.
I force myself to look at my scar. It doesn’t look split, but the pain remains.
‘It was the lesser of two evils,’ says Camilla. ‘We had no choice. He was threatening us. He was going to destroy me, Louise, damage Nina’s memory for Felix and Emily. He grabbed the knife, not you. It was self-defence, Marie. I had to save you.’
‘It was history repeating itself.’
Everything I found so abhorrent about Charlie’s death, I’ve mimicked.
‘Where’s the knife?’ I ask.
‘In my bag.’
‘Get rid of it!’
‘Where?’
‘I don’t know.’ My mind is all over the place. I don’t want to know. ‘Somewhere not overlooked by CCTV. I’ll wait here, be your alibi, but don’t take forever. Disguised in something in a public bin? Water? One of the lakes, maybe?’
My silence is now in exchange for Camilla’s, and vice versa. We’ve formed an irreversible, macabre bond. Yet, perversely, I believe that Nina would approve of us becoming – if not exactly friends – then companions or partners in crime, at last.
Chapter Forty
I awaken to Jack’s cries, the shouts of the elder two fighting over something – I can’t ascertain what – and the reality of yesterday’s horror. Rain, so heavy it sounds like hail, hits the windows. My abdomen aches. My head throbs. My stomach is a ball of pure dread. The doorbell rings and I rush to the toilet to throw up. Nothing happens.
I hear Stuart go downstairs. I stand by the bedroom door, listening. I wait, anticipating the thump of police boots on the stairs. It’s our online grocery delivery. I’d forgotten all about it. I hear Stuart exchanging pleasantries with the driver. After several minutes, my breathing still hasn’t returned to normal but my legs stop shaking. I call the doctor’s surgery.
‘How did you do it?’ asks the GP as she rolls down some blue paper onto the examination bed.
‘I don’t know,’ I say, clambering up. I lie down.
‘Does it hurt when I do this?’ Prod.
‘No.’
Another prod. ‘This?’
‘No.’
There’s no permanent damage, thankfully. I’m prescribed painkillers and told to be careful.
Back home, there is no way I can take it easy. I go to Camilla’s. We sip hot chocolate and talk in polite code because Louise is in the room. It’s impossible to articulate what I really want to say, and Camilla clearly feels as agitated as me.
‘Lulu, sweetie, seeing as it’s such a rubbish day, why don’t you go and watch a movie in my room?’ says Camilla. ‘As a one-off. You can even take your drink up with you.’
We remain silent for several moments, even once we’re alone.
‘How did you manage to act so normally after Charlie died? I say. ‘I remember you sitting by the pool in a pink sarong, sipping a cocktail as if nothing had happened. Like we’re doing now.’
‘We had no choice but to behave as normal or go down the confessional route. One or the other. We made a decision and stuck with it. Shock is numbing. It insulates you from the true horror.’
Camilla is a cold fish. She would’ve stabbed Greg a second time. Maybe more, I’m convinced of it. Perhaps she was more furious at being dumped than she let on. Did she feel the same towards Charlie when she realized it wasn’t her he wanted, but me?
‘Why did it end with your partner in Canada?’
It suddenly feels important that I know.
‘He met someone else. We had a lot of bust-ups, which got physical. I had to get away.’
I feel cold, despite the second hot chocolate Camilla makes us.
I lie on the sofa back home with Jack in his chair beside me. Intermittently, he jerks awake before dozing off again. Felix and Emily watch Finding Nemo.
After Camilla’s revelations, when I discovered that the money Nina had been putting away was for a charity dedicated to helping the families of people missing abroad, I’d felt – just for a moment – so utterly, pathetically, grateful that she’d cared enough about me. Stupid of me to react like that because of course, it never was about me. It was about her guilt.
A memory resurfaces: Camilla lost her temper with an on/off boyfriend at art college. We were in the canteen one lunchtime and he wouldn’t immediately agree to the plans she was trying to make with him that night. She yanked the tray from his hands and dropped it. As we all stared at the congealed mess of food and the smashed white plate on the floor, she insisted it had been an accident. I can’t remember his name. Jake? Luke? They split up for good after that.
I doze. Snagged to a rock is silky, emerald moss, which frames Greg’s face as he stares up at me, incomprehension and utter betrayal written all over his features. I run, but my body doesn’t move. I hear Jack screaming, but when I rush to his cot, it’s empty.
I sit up so quickly that Felix and Emily gape. I must look frightening – my hair is all over the place and my hands are shaking.
Jack is perfectly quiet. His little chest rises and falls. The elder two are absorbed in clownfish, shrimps and turtles. Everything is calm.
Guilt festers, churning my insides, making me raw with fear and self-hatred. Every rattle of the letterbox, every ring of the doorbell, reinforces that I have no idea if I’m on borrowed time or not.
The news is delivered the following afternoon by Tamsin. Of course.
Snippets of (mostly false) news filter through over the days, reminding me, yet again, of Charlie. News, old and new, intertwines.
Back then it was the talk of the island. Apparently. There were various rumours when it was known that someone had drowned. It wasn’t clear initially whether it was a man or a woman.
Now it is: He slipped and fell, an accident, a robbery gone wrong, an ex out to get him, a heart attack, a stroke, a branch fell from a tree and hit his head. Stabbed, brutally murdered.
I listen to all the local discussions and dissections with an expression of No? How awful plastered to my face, when inside, my stomach is knotted in panic and my mind is full of remorse and fearful regret.
Dreadful. Apparently he was alone. Wasn’t noticed for days because of bad weather. A tragic accident. Cowardly attack on a lone fisherman.
Stuart doesn’t seem as upset or shocked as everyone else is.
This seems harsh, despite him telling me that he didn’t like Greg.
I keep repeating the words it was an accident over and over until I believe them myself.
Which it was, really, on my part. I wish I’d never gone to make him see sense. I wish I’d spoken up at the time.
It’s amazing how many noises can sound like police sirens if you have a guilty conscience. Images of being cuffed, being guided into the back seat by a police officer, won’t leave me alone. I wouldn’t be tough like the characters I see in soaps, defiantly saying, ‘No comment.’ I’d crack within the first five minutes and confess, probably even to crimes I didn’t commit.
Every day I have a better understanding of Nina and how she must’ve felt. Strange, really, that I know her better after her death than when she was here. If she could be involved in murder, so it seems can I. The metamorphosis is complete.
I donate the money Nina collected in Charlie’s memory to the charity of her choice. I tick it off my mental list of good things I must do to make amends, however small.
Nothing helps take my mind off things for long. I go for endless walks in the forest with Jack and force myself to walk along the river, but never as far as the exact spot of Greg’s death. Guilt gnaws. Fear grows. My mind tosses around endless scenarios. I thank God for the heavy rains that followed; it must have helped destroy some evidence. I force myself to think of every worst possible outcome so that I can mentally prepare.
I recall reading that it’s not just what you leave at a crime scene, it’s also what you can take away: mud, plants and seeds. The list could be endless. I throw away the gloves and hat I wore on the morning of bin collection day, then wait and watch as our rubbish is crushed in the lorry. The rucksack I used on that fateful day I wash many times and I use it regularly on outings with the kids so it’s filled with all kinds of rubbish.
When I’m not tending to Jack or Goldie or the children, I finish Nina’s memory album with increased urgency. I have the photo evidence of Nina, Camilla and Charlie, hidden in plain sight, yet buried within the Ibizan pictures. It’s a part of Nina’s history – our history. It felt disingenuous to leave Charlie out, somehow, thinking about it. You’d have to know the story to realize that it’s incriminating.
Yet I made a mistake, too.
If I’d opened my mouth and told anyone who’d listen that Charlie was missing, regardless of how common it was, I could have extracted myself from them. I should’ve insisted that we went to the police or at least tried to find him. They’d have had to face up to what they’d done, however accidental (or not).
I’d have got on with my life, but by allowing myself to be guided by Nina, I remained immersed in her world. That’s the thing when you don’t fit in – you’ll be surprised at what you’ll do to make yourself more popular. I used to lie to make my life appear better. Back then, I lied through my inaction and a failure to act in the right way. It’s hard to forgive myself.
Now I’m stuck with yet another dilemma. And poor Charlie has faded away from collective consciousness. No one truly cares any more. It gives me an idea. Perhaps I’ll create a small album for Camilla, too. Everyone hopes they’re safe, that they can slip through life with various misdemeanours or more serious crimes unseen, but the camera can always see.
When I photographed weddings or parties, the purest details were revealed in the images I snatched during the final hours. The same applies to that photo of the three of them. A random stranger snapped that image while momentarily hidden behind Nina’s camera, unseen in the picture, yet they were a witness to Charlie’s final hours. It can’t do any harm for Camilla to have a reminder of that.
I close the album’s cover; it’s done. In pictures, Nina’s old life flows into the new: me, Jack, Goldie. The last picture is one of all the children in age order: Louise, Felix, Emily and Jack. Two boys, two girls. #happyblendedfamily. We have plenty of digital memories. It was important to have a physical one, too.
I phone Christian. There must be something in my voice, because he agrees to see me the following morning.
I am openly wistful, raw, with nothing left to hide. Strange, really, that I used to carry around with me this (yet another) irrational fear that if all my therapists somehow got together, they’d get a fuller, more accurate picture of me. For the first time, I speak from the heart, unfiltered.
‘Be careful what you wish for,’ I say. ‘It’s one of those things that you think you get but I didn’t, not until I wished for something for so hard and so long, then I got it. And it wasn’t what I wanted, or what I thought it would be. I did set out to steal Nina’s life.’
‘In what way?’
‘I thought if I had what Nina had, I’d be happy. She and I . . . We were friends, but I felt like her assistant or yes-person rather than us being in an equal friendship, especially as we got older. Love, hate. Envy, desire. It’s hard to explain what keeping quiet, or always guessing at what is the right thing to say or do, does to someone. I was never fully myself because I thought we wouldn’t stand a chance of being friends if I was. She was full of life, full of confidence in herself.’
I stop. I feel pathetic even
saying that out loud. I don’t want Christian to think that our work together has been a complete waste of time, that I don’t get that I am responsible for my own actions, feelings and thoughts. I do – now – but it doesn’t take away the fact that, deep down, I have to admit to myself that I always wanted what she had.
I believed that Nina had it all: a family (and no question about whether or not to keep her first baby), work she adored, a life partner I assumed she loved, too. I really did believe that the grass was greener. Now, here I am. And it’s not nearly as green as I imagined. I try to explain it differently.
‘When I was with Ben,’ I say, ‘I always carried with me a sense of feeling like the outsider looking in. I especially hated bank holidays, all those families crowded everywhere having fun.’
We both laugh.
‘If we were out having lunch, I’d stare at my plate of olives, artisan bread or whatever, and I never fully appreciated what a luxury it was because I wanted to be with the other people, the ones who were having a nicer time than me. I assumed that they were the ones who had got it right, who understood life’s rules. I truly had no idea, did I? I was wrong.’
Christian smiles in understanding.
‘I thought I’d be happy, that I had one chance to grab at life and everything would slot into place, that it would all suddenly make sense . . . yet it hasn’t happened that way.’ I take a deep breath. If I’m in the mood for being honest, I may as well continue. ‘I wanted a baby to replace the one I didn’t have, plus the future family I didn’t have with Charlie.’
‘It’s normal to mourn a loss,’ he says. ‘You made the right choices for you at the time.’
‘A friend of mine died recently in horrible circumstances,’ I blurt out.
The Last Wife: The addictive and unforgettable new thriller from the Sunday Times bestseller Page 29