But I don’t get the chance. As I approach the bar, he glances idly up and his eyes meet mine. The change in his expression is instant—defensiveness and shock, and something else besides, something strangely like fear. Abruptly, he pushes his stool back and stands up, abandoning his pint and walking fast toward the exit, head down.
It happens so quickly that it takes a few seconds for me to catch up. I swing round, staring after him. He’s clearly recognized me, and of course I should have realized this was a possibility; he’s bound to have seen me, if he’s been hanging around watching Natalie and Jade. But somehow his reaction still doesn’t seem quite right; everything I know tells me that this man is capable of acting brutally and without compunction, but I can’t match that to that brittle edge of fear in his eyes, the speed with which he’s retreating.
“Dominic!” I call, following him. He’s already out of the door, pushing it back with such force that it almost slams into my face. I catch up with him on the street, but he’s looking straight ahead, his face set, as if he’s trying to pretend I’m not there. “Dominic,” I say again, and am rewarded by the slight twitch of his expression, the panic that I know his name.
“Fuck off,” he says out of the side of his mouth, almost under his breath.
“You know who I am, don’t you?” I ask. “I’m Jade’s father. The girl you put in the hospital.”
He shoots me a look, feigning incomprehension. “I’ve done nothing.” He’s powering down the road, his eyes flicking from side to side, looking for an escape route.
I reach out and grab the sleeve of his jacket, but he shakes me off instantly and carries on walking. “You know exactly what I’m talking about. I know who you are, and I know what you’re doing. So you’d better fucking watch your back.” Dimly, I’m aware I’ve deviated from my script. There’s nothing subtle or investigative about this, but the fury has taken over, blazing through me and leaving no space for anything else.
“Leave me out of it,” he says. He’s lengthening his stride and I have to quicken my pace to keep up with him, my breath coming in hard, short gulps. “I’ve done nothing,” he repeats. “I’m out. I’m out.” He bites out the words one by one.
“Out of what?” I challenge. “So you admit there’s something to be out of. What would Kas think, if he could hear you now?”
He looks me full in the face for an instant then, his brow furrowed deeply in a frown. He shakes his head in silence, and then without warning, he’s broken into a full run, lashing out with one arm as he does so to knock me to the side and slam me against the wall. It’s a swift jab that only winds me for a few seconds, but it’s enough; by the time I’ve recovered and started to run after him, he’s flagged down a cab that’s rounding the corner of the street and dived into the back, slamming the door after him as it speeds off.
* * *
• • •
THE TRAIN JOURNEY back to Brighton does nothing to calm my nerves. I can’t stop going over the few seconds I spent with Dominic, cursing myself for being unable to keep calm. I’m overtaken by the same sense of intense frustration that I felt after my meeting with Kaspar—no matter what I do, I can’t seem to get any closer to these people or understand why they’ve decided to threaten my family, after all these years. From what Natalie’s told me, they weren’t happy with the way she spoke out against Kaspar at the trial, but why have they bided their time for so long? Can it be simply that they’ve waited until they think she’s happy and settled to strike? My thoughts circle each other uselessly, doing nothing to stem my frustration. I’m tired of being kept at arm’s length. I need someone who’s on my side.
As soon as the thought pops into my head, I remember Cali. Those last few words she wrote to me before she disappeared. She’s told you, hasn’t she? Is it possible that she could have meant Natalie, and that she knows more about the past than I realized? It’s clear that this woman isn’t quite the stranger I thought she was—she knows my name, knows about the fire. She’s repeatedly asked if I’m OK, said that she’s worried about me. I need to get in touch with her again, and get some straight answers.
As soon as I’m off the train at Brighton I walk to a pub near the seafront, order a drink, and tuck myself into a quiet table in the corner. I use my mobile to log in to secretroom, but for the first time Cali isn’t online. It seems significant, even though logically I know there’s no reason why she should be there waiting time after time. I refresh the page repeatedly, jabbing compulsively at the screen, but her username stays obstinately gray and absent. It seems I’ve scared her off. And yet I said so little—so little that it only reinforces my belief that she already knows more about me, and my family, than she has ever let on before.
It’s almost half an hour before the online icon by her name turns green. She’s there. Instantly, I type a message. Don’t go.
A beat, and she replies. I’ve only just arrived.
I’ve been intending to ask her what she meant last time before she logged off, but all at once it hits me that just because I want her to be on my side, it doesn’t mean she is. I have no idea what her agenda is here. So instead I decide to take a different tack.
I spoke to someone recently, I type. Someone you might know, or might have known once.
The reply comes back immediately. Who?
I hesitate, not wanting to be too explicit. After a few moments, I type: KK.
She doesn’t reply. I half expect her to exit the conversation at once, but she’s still there, just silent, in stasis. I try to picture this woman, wherever she is, staring at her own screen. I try to imagine the expression on her face.
When it seems she isn’t going to say anything, I try again. Do you know who I mean?
This time the pause is shorter. Yes.
Look, I can’t get anywhere with these people, I type. You obviously know something about me and my family. I just want to understand what’s happening. I don’t want any trouble.
Yes, she replies. I can imagine. But sometimes trouble just finds you.
I need to keep them safe, I type. My daughter, and my wife. You understand?
Your wife doesn’t need keeping safe. The reply is vicious in its swiftness. I frown, trying to understand. I see the dots rolling across the bottom of the screen again for more than half a minute, then freeze, as if she’s reading back what she’s written. A few seconds later the message appears.
I need to speak to you, she’s written. I don’t know how much you know, or what she’s told you. It may not be accurate. I know how strange this must seem to you, but it’s important that you hear what I have to say. Tell me where you are, and I’ll come and meet you right now.
Who are you?? I drain my drink in a fierce gulp that makes my eyes smart, realizing that I’m angry. On and off, this woman has been in my life for well over a year.
Just tell me where you are, she replies.
I think about arguing, but I know I run the risk of scaring her off. And in any case, I can’t see any other way forward now. I’m in the Golden Bell, I type. Leonard Street, just up from the seafront. Do you know it?
The answer comes back quick and sure. I’ll find you.
* * *
• • •
TIME PASSES and although I look up sharply every time anyone enters the bar, no one seems to even glance in my direction. I go to the bar and ask for a pint glass of water, then drain it back at my seat. I don’t want to feel drunk for this, but my head still swims lightly. I realize that I haven’t eaten anything all day and think about ordering some food, but just as I’m reaching for the menu I happen to glance up again, and I see her.
She’s standing in the doorway, scanning the opposite side of the bar. It’s probably only a few seconds before she turns, but each one feels stretched and liquefied, turning these brief moments into a strange, elongated limbo. I recognize her instantly, from the photograph that’s
still in my coat pocket.
Her cheekbones are a little softer than Natalie’s, her eyes slightly more slanted. She’s wearing a pale pink lipstick that I can’t imagine Natalie choosing and her hair is pinned up on top of her head instead of flowing loose over her shoulders. But there’s something in the curve of her lips and the tilt of her nose, something in the way she moves her hand to her face and brushes a falling tendril of hair back behind her ear. The two of them are cut from the same cloth.
She turns her head and her eyes meet mine. She blinks once, twice, seeing the shock in my gaze. Then she gathers herself together and walks slowly over to the table, slipping into the seat opposite mine.
“Hello,” she says. Her voice is softer than I’d imagined, a little more cultured and smooth.
“Hello,” I echo. For an insane instant, I find the corners of my mouth twitching; I want to burst into laughter. One of our early interchanges swims into my head—when she told me that she’d always fantasized about a stranger taking her hand on the street and pulling her aside, hustling her down a dark passageway, and fucking her up against a wall, his hand over her mouth, without a word exchanged. I had been that man, for a few minutes. I’ve never told anyone that, she had typed afterward, and I had believed her.
“You’re her sister,” I say, needing it to be said aloud, and she nods.
“Yes.” We stare at each other, for longer than would feel natural under other circumstances. “Do I look like her?” she asks at last. “I haven’t seen her for so long, you know.”
“In a way,” I say truthfully. “Not completely. But there’s something there.”
She nods, looking neutral. I don’t know what answer she wanted. She glances away for a moment, then returns her gaze to mine. There’s something unsettlingly intense about her dark-lashed eyes and their scrutiny. “I should apologize,” she says. “I know that what I’ve done to you is wrong.”
“You mean . . .” I begin carefully. The sphere of what she might be referring to is so wide that I wouldn’t like to second-guess.
“Approaching you in the first place,” she says, “on the website. It wasn’t particularly hard to do, but that doesn’t mean it was right.”
“I don’t understand,” I say. “How did you even know I was on the site? How did you know my username?” With a pinch of embarrassment, I think of my profile on secretroom; the unashamed arrogance of the name I’d chosen, Alpha1. That was the kind of thing women wanted there.
“I knew where you worked,” she says, “where you lived. These things are easy to find out. A couple of times I . . . engineered things so that I’d be likely to be where you were, at the same time. It wasn’t stalking. I was curious, that’s all. And one time—this was a long time ago now—you were in a café, and you went to the toilet, and you left . . .”
“My laptop on the table,” I finish, unable to keep the incredulity from my tone. I’d assumed that the laptop had been taken by a teenage thief.
“That’s right,” she says, eyes downcast. “I’m sorry. It’s not hard to get past security settings, you know, not if you know what you’re doing, or know someone who does. And the site was there, in your history. The laptop was still logged into your e-mail, so I did a search for the site and I found your username. It seemed like the best way of—connecting with you, anonymously.” She looks at me for a brief instant, then away. There’s something intensely awkward in her tone. The woman I’ve been talking to on secretroom is shameless, brazen even, but that doesn’t fit at all with the person sitting opposite me. In fact, it doesn’t fit with the picture Natalie has painted of Sadie either—but this picture is almost two decades out of date. Something’s changed her, radically. Just like my wife, she’s become someone else.
“But why did you do it?” I ask. “Why connect with me, as you put it, at all?”
She draws in a long breath, leaning back in her seat. The candlelight radiating from the little glass jar on the table between us flickers up and flows in shadows round the moldings of her face, and I see that similarity leaping to life again. “I had to see if you were happy with her,” she says. “I couldn’t think how else to test it. And after we started . . . well, I didn’t think you were. Or you wouldn’t have—continued to engage with me.”
“I stopped it,” I say uncomfortably. “In the end. It didn’t mean anything.” These are not words you would normally say to a woman so bluntly, with no explanation or apology, but I can see she doesn’t mind. I realize something as I look at her, something that floods me with guilty relief. This woman is attractive—striking, even. When I think of the things we’ve talked about and match them up with the face and body in front of me, I do feel an automatic twinge of desire. But the sight of her doesn’t captivate me the way that first sight of Natalie did. If I met the two of them together as strangers, it’s my wife that I would want to talk to; she’s the one that I would want to take home.
“Yes,” she nods. “And I’d accepted that. Started to think that I’d been wrong, and that perhaps you and she were happy. I stepped back. But then I found out about the fire. I contacted you again, because it—it worried me.”
There’s something strange in the words she’s chosen; they’re understated, and yet I can’t see exactly what it is that might have worried her. “Do you know who was responsible?” I ask carefully. Long overdue, I realize who it is I’m talking to here. Not just Natalie’s sister, but a woman who was involved with a dangerous man, involved in murder.
“I have a good idea,” she says, “but I’m not sure why.”
We could go on like this all night, I think, circling each other delicately, testing the ground. I need to cut to the chase. “Look,” I say, “I never would have agreed to meet up with you under normal circumstances, but things are getting out of hand. If you’re trying to sabotage our lives, I need to know about it and I need to understand why.”
“Sabotage,” she repeats. “I wouldn’t put it like that.” Incredibly, she sounds faintly offended. “Like I said, I just needed to know that you were happy. If I’d thought you were, I would have left you alone. I did leave you alone, when you stopped messaging me.”
“We are happy,” I say firmly. For some reason, saying this out loud gives me an odd sensation, as if I’m swaying on the edge of a dark cliff, not quite knowing when or if I’ll fall.
“I believe that now, more than I did before,” she says. “If she’s told you about the past, and you still want to be with her, then you must love her.”
“She can’t help what happened to her,” I say sharply. “She was forced into a situation that was hardly her fault.” I see her opening her mouth to contradict me, but I plow on. “And besides,” I continue, “I’m not sure what our relationship has to do with you, in any case.”
She shrugs miserably. “Nothing, of course. But all the same, it felt wrong not to check.”
Impatience flares up inside me; I don’t understand this conversation. I reach for my glass, but it’s empty. “For fuck’s sake,” I find myself saying, louder than I had intended, “what is this? Why the hell would you think we needed checking up on?”
“Just the habit of a lifetime, I suppose,” she fires back, “and by the sound of what you told me earlier, you’re well aware that something isn’t right. Why else would you have gone to see Kas?” Her voice drops on the last word, and I notice the way her eyes flick quickly, reflexively, around the room, as if she’s checking that no one has heard.
“Because this situation is fucking frightening,” I say. “Because someone set our house on fire. And if what my wife thinks is right, then you know all of this already, you’re involved in the whole damn thing.”
She stares at me, her pink lips slightly parted, a frown creasing her brows. Either she is a brilliant actress, or she is genuinely confused. “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she says. “Why would I be involved?”
&n
bsp; “You’re lying to me,” I snap. But even as I speak I realize that I’m not sure. There’s something so straightforward about her gaze, and that frightens me. “I’m not here to play games,” I say. “I love Natalie, and I want to protect her. That’s all.”
There is a pause, and a sad little smile appears at the corners of her lips. “It sounds so odd,” she says, “you calling her that.”
“I can’t think of her as anything else.” I don’t want to get derailed, but it’s something that’s played on my mind, too, ever since she first sat huddled on those rocks by the seafront and told me that other name. “Rachel doesn’t suit her.”
At first I don’t understand what I’ve said, or why it provokes the reaction that it does. She draws in her breath sharply. I see her eyes move from side to side, as if she’s weighing things up, fitting together the pieces of a mental jigsaw. “I see,” she says at last.
“What?” I ask roughly. I don’t like the tone of her voice, or the sudden paleness of her face, the gravity of her expression.
She leans forward, and with a shock I realize that she’s reaching for my hand across the table. She takes it in her own cool fingers, the tips pressing insistently into my palm. “You don’t understand,” she says. “She’s lying to you. She’s not who you think she is. The person you’re talking about is me. I’m Rachel.”
PART SIX
SADIE
SEPTEMBER 2017
After Alex has left to meet Gavin, I can’t settle. I prowl back and forth in the tiny hotel room, trying to get rid of this restlessness. I go to the bathroom and stare at myself in the little fluorescent-lit mirror above the sink. That’s one habit I’ve hung on to. I still like losing myself in the depths of my own eyes, still find it calming and serene. But this time it doesn’t quite do the trick. I try a little longer, and then I give up, pulling on my coat and hurrying down to the hotel lobby. Nervous energy is fizzing through me like seltzer. I can already see a taxi lingering on the road outside. It’s time.
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