‘Bucket lists,’ she repeated. ‘I want to get to know you a little better, so you tell me yours, and I’ll tell you mine. Rapid-fire. Go!’
‘Right.’ Jason shook his head. ‘Okay. Er, climb a mountain.’
‘The Andes, Peru,’ Jessie shot back. ‘A trek to Cusco, the soul of the Inca Empire,’ she added, as if she’d already half-planned it. ‘My turn. See the Wonders of the World.’
‘Ditto,’ Jason said, in the absence of anything else coming to mind.
‘No, you can’t have the same as mine,’ Jessie chided him. ‘That’s cheating.’
‘Ah, er…’ Jason furrowed his brow. He’d never really thought about all the things he’d like to do before he died. He’d thought he’d achieved one of his ambitions in life: to have a family, to belong. That hadn’t worked out too well. ‘I’m running out of ideas.’
‘Already?’ Jessie laughed. ‘What about… scuba diving?’
‘Been there,’ Jason answered.
‘Really? Oh, okay.’ Jessie paused to ponder. ‘Kayaking then.’
‘Yep, done that too.’
‘My, we are fit, aren’t we?’ Jessie sounded impressed. ‘Okay, well…’ She stopped to consider. ‘If you could change your career, what would you do?’
Now Jason was definitely bemused. Was she telepathic? ‘I am changing my career,’ he said. ‘Sort of. I’m looking at working in Ireland, as it happens. Nothing’s certain yet, but there’s an extreme sports company that might want me. I learned to microlight there, years ago now, but it’s a possibility.’
‘Well, I’ll be damned. A man after my own heart.’ Jessie laughed in amazement. ‘Oh my God, we have to book some microlighting lessons when you come over. Ireland’s coastal regions are a pure feast for the eyes. I don’t think I’ve ever done anything so exhilarating. Well, apart from when I flew a helicopter,’ she went on blithely, talking excitedly. ‘I’m not sure I’ll be getting my pilot’s licence any time soon, though. My navigational skills really are rubbish. I’d probably end up being fished out the Irish Sea or else off the top of a bus. To be fair, it was lashing out of the heavens once I got up there. I swear the fella with me was almost having a heart attack with me at the controls.’
Jason shook his head, astonished, and wondered whether his luck might be changing, after all.
‘Yikes, look at the time,’ Jessie yelped. ‘I have to go, or I’ll be useless at work. You too. You’ll get the sack before you’ve lined up your new job, at this rate.’
Jason hadn’t yet mentioned it was his own company he was selling. There was a lot she needed to know about him. A hell of a lot. Maybe, in time, he could explain to her what his ‘complications’ were without leaving her as shocked as he’d felt when he’d found out.
‘Speak soon,’ she said. ‘Keep your chin up, but watch what you’re doing with your other body bits.’
‘I will.’ Jason chuckled as she signed off, leaving him somewhat dazed. She’d blown into his life like a whirlwind just when he needed her. He only hoped she didn’t come to regret it.
He was heading for the outer office, thinking he ought to show willing and actually do some work, when his phone rang again.
Karla.
Swallowing back his now almost overwhelming guilt, Jason picked up.
‘Do you love her?’ she asked immediately, sounding tearful. ‘Jessie, do you love her?’
Jason stumbled over his answer.
‘Are you going to tell me it’s not what I think it is?’ Karla went on, before he could formulate any sensible thought.
‘No,’ he said, no idea what else to say. ‘I…’
‘I want you to tell me it’s not what I think. You have to!’ Karla cried forcefully. ‘You can’t love her. You love me!’
THIRTY-NINE
KARLA
The rain is relentless, drumming bullet-like off the pavement, icy daggers slicing into my clothes and wetting me through to my skin. My body is shaking. It’s uncontrollable. My stomach lurches as I heave. I’m not sure what happened. One minute I was drinking, dancing, in another place, happy, bubbly me. The next I was crying as the walls tilted and the world seemed to close in on me. I tried to stay calm, inhaling deeply, exhaling slowly. It didn’t help. My legs almost buckled beneath me as I blundered, disorientated, to the exit. Now I am bent over in the street, wearing a body-con dress that clings to my flesh and shows too much of my thin body, and I am so sick, so very sick. This time, I know I am in deep trouble. The rotating blue light that skims the shop window beside me confirms it.
The police are patient, though their despair is thinly veiled. The female police officer who assists me into the patrol car and seats herself next to me seems particularly unimpressed. ‘Would you like to repeat that again, sweetheart?’ she says, clearly struggling to understand my gabbled explanations as to why I’m wandering the streets in the dead of night, vomiting into the gutter. ‘But a little bit more slowly this time, hey?’
I take a tremulous breath and try to articulate, desperately try to quash the queasiness rising inside me. She thinks I’ve taken drugs. I know she does. I can see the accusation in her eyes. But I haven’t. I think it was the last drink I had, which I left unguarded on the bar. But I can’t be sure. I can’t remember whether I drank it, or how many drinks I had. I can’t think. I can’t remember.
I don’t want to remember. I wish I could disappear into the dark, friendless night. That the rain would wash me away.
‘Karla?’ she prompts me, as another shudder shakes through me.
‘My father, he’s driving my husband away.’ I try again to explain: why I’m here; why I’ve drunk so much; why I’m upset. Inside my head, I can hear myself saying it, but the words emerge from my mouth in a hiccupping, unintelligible slur. ‘He’s destroyed my marriage.’ I try harder, grope for some coherence. ‘He’s stealing my children!’
‘Who is, my lovely?’ the officer asks, concern in her voice as she reaches to stop me attempting to open the car door, which refuses to budge.
‘My husband,’ I mumble, wrapping my arms tight around my midriff, trying to still the incessant shaking that seems to be rattling my body down to my bones.
‘He’s a bit of a git then, is he?’ she says, taking hold of my shoulders and steering me towards her, peering narrowly at me.
‘I won’t let him.’ I attempt to focus, but her eyes, her nose, her features all blend into one, and there is wet cotton wool in my head, and my own eyes are so heavy. So very heavy.
‘Don’t blame you, sweetheart,’ she says, now sounding definitely unimpressed. ‘Station or accident and emergency?’ I hear her ask her partner, as if through a tunnel.
‘The latter. Why not fill A & E with bloody drunks?’ he mutters moodily. And my chest constricts as I drag another ragged breath in, try to stop the fresh tears erupting – tears of shame, pathetic self-pity and anger.
FORTY
DIANA
Noting that Karla still looked deathly pale when she went in to check on her, Diana’s heart ached. It had almost splintered inside her when Karla had rung in the middle of the night from the hospital. She’d sounded so distraught; Diana had been terrified of what she might find when she got there.
Seeing her stir at last, she walked across to her. ‘Feeling better?’ She smiled, smoothing Karla’s fringe gently from her forehead as she lowered herself to sit on the edge of the bed.
‘Much.’ Karla nodded and attempted to lever herself up.
Diana moved to help her. She didn’t look better. If anything, she looked utterly exhausted, and so young and vulnerable, suddenly, that she could almost be the child who’d lain in this same bed twenty-five years back, not eating, unresponsive and unsmiling. She’d gone into herself after they lost Sarah, hardly talking for several weeks. In her sleep she would talk, cry out, her voice filled with anguish as she called Sarah’s name. In her nightmares, Karla relived the horror of the bleak morning she’d discovered her sister lying dead, over and over.
All Diana had been able to do was rock her gently back to sleep, try to softly reassure her, be there for her; hope that, even if she could never forget it, she would come through it. That she would eventually stop blaming herself. And Karla had come through it. Diana had been proud of the way her girl had pulled herself up, determined to live life to the full and make something of herself.
When she’d first brought Jason home, confided she was pregnant by him, that she was in love with him and that they intended to have the baby and marry, Diana had worried for her. She’d hardly been able to sleep. Seeing that she’d found someone who quite clearly loved her back, who cared for her, someone who could make her smile again, she’d buried her worries. She’d thwarted Robert’s attempts to interfere, and prayed that things would work out for them; that her daughter’s marriage would be a better one than hers – a happy one, filled with love and, importantly, trust. And now this. Her marriage destroyed. Her confidence and belief in herself shattered, thanks to Robert, a man who imagined he was so important he was infallible, untouchable; that he wouldn’t reap what he sowed. He would. If Diana hadn’t achieved much in her own life, she was determined to succeed in one thing, and that was to ensure Robert’s abominable behaviour caught up with him.
‘Thanks, Mum.’ Leaning back, Karla smiled sadly. ‘For everything, I mean, as well as coming to collect me. I didn’t know who else to call.’
Her husband would have gone to her, but Karla would rather have died than allow him to see her like that, lying emotionally broken on a hospital trolley. Diana’s heart grew heavier. ‘Did you think I wouldn’t?’ She gave her a mock scowl.
Karla dropped her gaze, and the unshed tears finally came. Pulling her tight to her, Diana held her while she cried, smoothing a hand over her hair. Her once beautiful, bouncy blonde hair, now shorn and coloured dark auburn – Sarah’s colour, almost. When Diana had first set eyes on her at the hospital, while Karla was still woozy, she’d realised that her daughter was deeply troubled. That the ghosts from her past had never truly been laid to rest. Feelings she’d never been able to process – her grief, her deep sense of loss – had resurfaced, been exacerbated by the prospect of losing her husband. Her daughter wasn’t coping. Diana had no choice but to find a way to help her.
‘I’m sorry, Mum.’ Karla sniffled shakily. ‘I didn’t mean to be so stupid.’
Diana reached for her hands. ‘You’ve nothing to be sorry for, Karla,’ she said firmly. ‘It happened. It’s over. You reached rock bottom and now you have to climb back up again, for yourself, for your children. They need you. No man’s worth this, sweetheart.’
Being arrested for killing a man of Robert’s ilk might possibly be worth it, Diana couldn’t help thinking, but slowly killing yourself, humiliating yourself, getting drunk at nightclubs over a man? Karla was worth more than this. It was about time she realised that.
‘I love him, Mum,’ Karla said, looking beseechingly at her, as if willing her to understand.
Diana did. More than her daughter knew. Her own heart would always bear the scars she’d inflicted on it the day she’d walked away from the man who truly loved her. Michael, though, had refused to let her go, staying in touch over the years. Diana was so glad that he had. Her life would have been intolerable without him to talk to. She needed to talk to him now.
‘But how will this help?’ Dismissing thoughts of Michael to concentrate on her daughter, she glanced worriedly across to the chair, on which were the questionable clothes Karla had been wearing in the nightclub: a minuscule black dress and thigh-high boots – a scream to be noticed. ‘What are you trying to prove, darling?’ she asked her, making sure to keep her tone non-judgemental.
‘I don’t know.’ Karla shrugged, looking as miserable as it was possible to be. ‘I suppose I wanted to remind Jason there was more to me than being a wife and a mother.’ She paused, her eyes downcast as she absent-mindedly traced the flower pattern on the duvet with a forefinger.
‘I’m not sure he ever really knew me, Mum.’ She looked back at her, after a second, with such agony in her eyes, it tore Diana apart. ‘I’m not sure I do. All of the pieces of me, I mean. I thought, if I could find them, that… Oh, I don’t know… I thought that if he remembered there was more to me, he might learn to love me again.’
Diana swallowed back a hard knot of emotion. She might be wrong, but she was sure that Jason still loved her daughter. If he did feel differently, then it might be too late. But if they were to stand any chance of coming through this, then Diana had to make it safe for him to keep loving her. The consequences for herself would be life-changing, but then, wasn’t that change long overdue? She should have done it years ago. Then she might not have been sitting here, watching her daughter’s life fall apart.
Once the press got hold of it, the consequences for Robert would be catastrophic. Diana had considered that, and she realised she no longer cared. Once, she would have done. She’d made up her mind to be with him; been determined she would support him as a wife, told herself she would grow to love him. But, if his deplorable, misogynistic behaviour hadn’t killed any affection she’d had for him, his lies had. The lies he’d told about the circumstances surrounding Sarah’s death were the worst lies of all. There’d been no need, other than to preserve himself. Diana had realised, then, that that was what Robert was all about: self-preservation above everything else, even his own child.
‘I should go,’ Karla said suddenly, pushing the duvet back and attempting to heave herself off the bed. ‘The children…’
‘Will be perfectly fine with Jason.’ Diana eased her gently back again. ‘Stay here until you’re feeling stronger. Indulge yourself and have a nice hot bath. Meanwhile, I’ll get us something nice to eat. Soup,’ she added, when Karla looked doubtful. ‘You look like a sickly little pigeon. Though a very pretty one.’
Karla managed a small smile at last.
Giving her a warm smile back, Diana tucked up the duvet and walked to the door. She would feel better herself, doing something practical. To which end, she would ring Robert’s receptionist, as she’d promised she would, and give her blessing for her to go ahead and talk to the newspapers. Abbie was a pretty young thing, and Robert, given his predilections, wouldn’t have been able to resist. Diana was well aware of that.
Courgette and tomato soup, she decided, going into the kitchen. Her speciality – wholesome but not overly filling. Karla had lost far too much weight. She needed building up. She needed to fight back, but not like this.
Diana chopped the onions while she pondered, and then paused as her phone beeped. Michael. Her heart skipped a beat. He was always reliable, punctually phoning or messaging her when he said he would. With the distance between them, the occasions they could be together were rare, but cherished and more special because of it. There would have been no distance between them, if only… Quashing that thought, Diana downed her knife. She had no time for regrets. The past was the past. Her focus now had to be on her daughter’s future, whatever the emotional cost to herself.
Picking up her phone, she checked the text.
Still on for next week?
Desperate to meet, Diana replied.
Naturally, he sent back. Not conceitedly. Diana knew he wasn’t an arrogant man.
Obviously, she said.
Shall I call you? he asked.
Not a good idea. Karla is still here.
Ah, no problem. How is she? he enquired, aware of why she was there.
Hurting, Diana answered honestly.
You need to talk to her.
Diana took a breath. I know. I just have to be sure.
You know where I am if you need me.
Diana wished he was there. Ireland suddenly seemed so very far away. It will keep until we meet.
I look forward to it, Michael assured her. Whatever the outcome, I’ll be there, Diana. I should always have been.
But he couldn’t have been, could he? Diana had loved him with her whole being, but as a ma
rried man with a small income and a two-year-old child, Michael had struggled with his conscience. Diana had eventually made his decision for him. She’d chosen Robert, fancying that a comfortable life where her child would be abundantly provided for might soften the pain of her loss. Perhaps living this life of purgatory had been her just deserts? Diana had pondered that often, but there was nothing to be done about it now, other than what she had to.
See you soon. She signed off with a kiss, and then, cursing the onions, wiped a tear from her eye and went back to her recipe. She was chopping the courgettes when her phone pinged in another text. Diana had been expecting this one too.
Are you still sure you want me to go to the press? Julie had sent.
Positive. Diana replied.
But I thought the payments were to ensure I didn’t. Julie was obviously concerned. Are you positive he won’t try to sue me?
Absolutely. He’ll be in no position to, trust me. And it’s high time Robert found out what it’s like to be bullied and blackmailed, don’t you think? Ask him for one more payment and then go for it.
I’ll email him now. Do you want me to transfer your share of the payment to the usual account? Julie asked.
That would be perfect. You’re an angel. Diana smiled, pleased that she would have a little extra to add to the quite considerable sum she’d already accumulated. Having to sleep with Robert’s accountant had been an odious chore – the man was a lecherous old reptile, definitely one of Robert’s ilk – but necessary in order to achieve her aim. It really was quite amazing what a man was prepared to do in order to prevent his ‘indiscretions’ being found out.
That’s what friends are for, Julie assured her. Take care. X
You too. X
Diana then set about chopping the courgettes with new vigour. Yes, doing something practical definitely made her feel better.
The Marriage Trap: A completely addictive psychological thriller Page 21