The English Boys

by Julia Thomas

  For a moment, Daniel was silenced. “I didn’t know you knew.”

  “When I figured out who Tamsyn was, I put a detective on the case. He brought me photos of the girl. She’s obviously Hayley’s bloody brat. You don’t even need a DNA test to see that. The dark hair, the hazel eyes.”

  “But—”

  “I wasn’t the father, but it didn’t matter to Tamsyn who got her pregnant. She was after me. She judged me at fault for what happened to her.”

  “Why did you rape her?”

  The question hung in the air, and Daniel could see that Hugh was struggling with his answer.

  “We were kids, Daniel. Just kids. It was just a single night when everything went horribly wrong. It never happened again.”

  Hugh was telling the truth, he could tell. For a moment, Daniel could see it through his eyes: Hugh had made one mistake and would pay for it for the rest of his life. He couldn’t imagine living with something like that. But in spite of the fact that Hugh had suffered, Tamsyn had suffered more.

  “She tried to kill herself, you know.”

  Hugh stood. “No, I didn’t know.”

  “When did you realize who she was?”

  “I recognized her on the ferry,” Hugh replied, “but I wasn’t sure where I’d seen her before. It was when you brought her to Dorset that first day that I knew. If you recall, she stood on the doorstep as bold as you please.”

  “Fucking hell.”

  “That’s one way to put it.”

  “You shouldn’t have even spoken to her, let alone encouraged Sir John to hire her for the film. The whole thing makes me sick.”

  “It was her own fault, Daniel,” he said. “The stupid bitch should have known she would never get away with it. It was an incredibly reckless thing to do.”

  Daniel reached out and grabbed him by the collar. “Shut up. Don’t talk about her like that.”

  “Touched a nerve, did I?” Hugh asked, holding his hands up. “Well, she wasn’t worth it. She was a liar through and through. She would have killed me when I wasn’t looking and then taken everything I had. She betrayed you. She betrayed me. She was just like Lizzie Marsden, trying to bring us down.”

  “Stop,” Daniel warned.

  “And for the record, it didn’t happen the way you’re imaging it, either.”

  “I said, stop!”

  Hugh pulled away from his grasp. “You’re not the only one who is hurt here.”

  “What on earth do you mean?”

  “I lost something too, that day. I knew when it happened that I would lose you both. The worst part was knowing that you could take her away from me. She wanted you more.”

  Daniel’s mouth dropped open. “You didn’t even want her.”

  “Well, technically, I did, but you don’t want to know what for.”

  Daniel punched him squarely in the jaw and stepped back, shocked at his own anger. He shook his hand, his knuckles stinging from the punch.

  “Shit!” Hugh cried, rubbing his jaw. “That hurt. You have a better right hook than I thought.”

  “You killed Lizzie too.”

  “Of course I did. You know what a bitch she could be. She was going to blab to the tabloids to take us both down. She was fixated on the fact that my father had grown up poor and liked to rub it in. Someone was bound to kill her, sooner or later.”

  “Life’s just one big chess match to you, isn’t it? You’re moving people around like pawns.”

  “I was trying to keep you from getting hurt.”

  “You weren’t thinking of me. You were thinking of yourself.”

  “Aren’t we sanctimonious? You would have let Lizzie fucking ruin us and gone happily back to Brighton to sell fish and chips. And this time, you would have let Tamsyn kill me and then taken her into your bed and turned a blind eye.”

  “She wouldn’t have,” Daniel protested, but he knew he was wrong. Tamsyn had been hell-bent on revenge and would probably have killed Hugh just as soon as the opportunity presented itself. He stood just feet away from him, fist still poised in the air in front of him, watching Hugh flex his jaw.

  “See,” Hugh said. “You can’t even convince yourself.”

  Daniel shook his head, trying to decide what to do. He couldn’t let Hugh get away with killing the girl he loved. Or could he? Could he walk out the door and leave Hugh to the police investigation? Was it his place to avenge her death? It was hard to believe any of it, in fact: how Tamsyn had planned to exact revenge on Hugh over months, even years; how Hugh knew all along and had the nerve to let her playact her dangerous little drama; or even how he, Daniel, had been caught up in the life of a man who raped and murdered as easily as jingling coins in his pocket. “All we like sheep have gone astray,” he recalled from the Book of Common Prayer. How could he not have realized that something was seriously wrong with the one person with whom he had spent more time than any other in the last ten years? Hugh was his best friend. Now, even knowing the truth, it was hard to believe.

  “Ironic, isn’t it?” Hugh asked. He stepped behind his father’s desk and opened the upper left-hand drawer.

  Daniel suddenly realized both Hugh and his father were left-handed. He had opened the wrong drawer. Before he could react, Hugh pulled out a pistol and pointed it directly at Daniel’s chest. “You’re the last person I ever wanted to hurt.”

  “Give me the gun.”

  “You know, I had higher hopes for you. I thought our friendship was strong enough to last through anything.”

  Daniel reached out; to do what, he did not know; but Hugh darted out of his reach.

  “Wait,” he said. “It doesn’t have to end like this.”

  “How does it end, then?” Hugh asked. “I let you turn me in to the police? Spend the rest of my life rotting in prison?”

  “Don’t be stupid. Just give me the gun.”

  Hugh cocked the pistol and looked him in the eye. Daniel could see the fear and the regret, but before he could react, Hugh lowered the gun and fired. The bullet shot into the thick muscle of Daniel’s thigh. He cried out, tumbling forward onto the rug. Hugh placed his heel against Daniel’s shoulder, pinning him to the ground.

  “What a fucking mess,” Hugh said. “Why couldn’t you have left it alone? I’ll have to tell Finch you tried to kill me.”

  Daniel didn’t reply. His leg was on fire from the bullet. He turned and looked up over his shoulder at Hugh. His life, his career; nothing mattered but to stop Hugh from killing again. And he would definitely kill again; probably beginning with the guard downstairs. Bullet or not, he had to do something.

  Hugh raised the gun, but Daniel came up underneath him, pushing Hugh’s leg up with him. As he rose, his leg searing with pain and blood seeping down his trouser, he lifted Hugh nearly off his feet and up against the open doors, onto the balcony. Hugh seized hold of the curtain, but the rod broke off the wall. He teetered against the ledge for an instant, the gun clattering onto the ground below. He fought to grasp the railing as he slid over the side. There was an ugly moment as his long limbs, admired by thousands of women around the world, went over the rail, and Daniel’s oldest friend fell to the unforgiving concrete below.

  Daniel heard the screams of the journalists in the street as he sank down on the balcony, trying not to lose consciousness.

  Thirty-Five

  The moment Daniel left her in Westminster Abbey, the room felt strangely empty. Tamsyn turned away from the door, the white satin of her wedding dress rustling with the small movement. It was all she could do not to run after him. She turned over in her mind all it had taken to get to this point: ten years of plotting, and even then she had been forced to rely on luck. Still, she had succeeded. She was minutes away from fulfilling the vow she’d made to herself that dark night at the lighthouse in Llandudno, the promise that she would get revenge on the English bo
ys who had raped her.

  Marc Hayley was Emma’s father. She had known it as soon as she’d seen the dark-haired infant. But it hadn’t really mattered. The rape had been Hugh’s idea. He was the one who’d chatted her up and had driven her away from the beach and away from any chance for a normal life that she would ever have. He had raped her and then held her down while Marc raped her too. Hayley had been reluctant, even trying to stop what they all knew could not be stopped. He would pay as well, though not with his life. Hugh was another matter altogether.

  It was still frightening to remember the rape. The powerlessness. The fear. The sweat that broke out all over her body. The persistent shaking that could not be stilled. The whites of Hugh’s eyes had seemed yellow in the dim light; yellow and round like a full moon, his breath hot against her cheek.

  She remembered the gulls gliding through the steamy summer air above them, and the smell of the sea and damp grass. It soaked through the T-shirt that she’d put on over her swimsuit. She hadn’t put on her shorts, tossing them into her bag lest she slow down the mood and the boys went off to flirt with another girl. Even now, she could close her eyes and feel the hard grit of sand and rocks on her buttocks as Hugh jerked off her bikini and seized her hair to hold her down. He was half mad that night, a monster driven by the desire to dominate, and it happened so quickly she was still bewildered that the boy she had thought so charming could change into something she didn’t even recognize.

  At fifteen, she’d still had baby fat. She still dreamed of meeting a lovely boy and sitting on a beach, reading Emily Dickinson and T.S. Eliot together under a golden moon. She had hoped to go to university to study English, and perhaps one day to write herself. Instead, she was wrestled to the ground, stripped naked as only an adolescent girl can be, her wrists pinned down, and violated again and again. She would always feel dirty, as though streaks of semen would perpetually drip down her pale, shivering thighs. No matter how many times she closed her eyes to sleep she would never wake without a gasp, remembering. The pain would never leave her. She had never had any choice but to find him and kill him.

  Daniel Richardson had nearly ruined everything. When she’d attracted his attention on the ferry, he was only meant to be a means of getting to Hugh. Yet he was so unexpected, so different from anyone she had ever met. He was genuine and interesting. He was funny, and wicked, and self-deprecating in the best way. She felt something for him that she had never felt for anyone else, though she couldn’t act on it. He loved Hugh, and astonishingly, he loved her.

  He loved her. She knew it. But there was nothing she could do about it now. Love, as much as the world would have one believe otherwise, wasn’t more important than revenge. In her weaker moments, Tamsyn thought of Daniel and what a relationship with him would be like, but she wasn’t certain normal bonds were even possible for someone like her, someone forged by the tragedy of her past.

  She could have killed Hugh the first night she’d spent at his house in Dorset. He had gone to bed and shut the door without locking it. Perhaps, she had thought at the time, it had even been an invitation of sorts, although she was certain he hadn’t recognized her. And now here they were, she and Hugh, in Westminster Abbey, about to marry in front of everyone they knew. He would get his punishment soon enough, and she would reap the revenge she had long desired.

  “Great dress,” a voice said behind her. It was smooth and rich, the sort everyone loved in his films.

  She turned to look at Hugh. “I’m glad you like it.”

  He looked at her for a long moment, the only sound in the room the ticking of the clock on the wall. He was standing just inside the door, several feet away. “Are you sure you’re ready for this?”

  “Are you?” she asked. She glanced at the bouquet that sat on a table next to where he was standing.

  “We don’t have to go through with it, you know,” he said.

  “Hand me the flowers, will you?” she answered, ignoring his remark.

  He frowned but picked up the posy of budding white roses, which had been wrapped in thick laps of green ribbon around the stem. “Are you worried about the expense?” he asked. “It’s nothing, I assure you. You just shouldn’t do anything you aren’t fully prepared to do.”

  Tamsyn met his eyes. “I’ve burned my bridges. What about you?”

  “Oh, I’m always prepared.” He stepped closer.

  She felt a frisson of fear. It wasn’t the Hugh of the last few months that stood looking her in the eye. It was the primal Hugh who had raped her and left her stranded on the isolated beach in a ripped bikini and a bloody, stained shirt. She itched to grab the bouquet. In the stem, she’d wrapped a long, thin, razor-sharp knife; it was her contingency plan in case something went horribly wrong. But she forced herself not to reach for it yet. She would take it from him when he came closer and stab him in the heart before he knew what had happened.

  Hugh gave a small laugh and raised a brow. “Well, it’s your choice, Tam. I gave you the chance to walk away.”

  “I was never going to walk away.”

  “I have to say, I couldn’t believe the nerve it must have taken you to walk through that door in Dorset last fall. I quite admired that. If anyone thinks you aren’t a good actress, I would sincerely like to set them straight. Tell me why you did all this. That’s all I want to know.”

  “I’ve been planning to kill you since the day you raped me.”

  He laughed, apparently surprised. “Well, you’ve had plenty of chances. The question is, why have you waited? Are you hoping that two hundred people will watch you do it?”

  “I couldn’t care less who sees me do it.”

  Suddenly, he went still. “You waited until now because of Daniel, didn’t you?”

  “You sound jealous, Hugh.”

  “Oh, I’m jealous. I’m completely fucking jealous, but not about you.”

  “You’re jealous of him,” she said, raising a brow. “Everyone thinks you’re so alike: best friends, actors. Only you’re nothing like him, are you? You’re the broken one. You’re the one who couldn’t get your own father to love you and you have to prove yourself over and over.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “I know exactly what I’m talking about. You wish you were Daniel. Even your parents love him more than you. You’ve spent your life trying to keep his love when you don’t deserve it. He would hate you if he knew what you were capable of.”

  “You know, I currently have something more pressing to deal with—like a fiancée who brought a knife to the wedding.” Hugh loosened the long green ribbon and pulled the knife from the stem of the bouquet, holding it close to her face. “I could kill you right here in Westminster Fucking Abbey, with everyone you know on the other side of that door.”

  “I didn’t expect to come out of this alive.” Tamsyn stood her ground. “Although, to be honest, I thought if you knew who I was, you might try to kill me in Fiji.”

  “‘Bride goes missing after romantic boat ride.’ How unfortunate for the grieving young widower. Instead of starting a life together, it ends tragically.” Hugh lowered the knife and brushed it with his finger. “Not that it hadn’t crossed my mind.”

  “If you knew, why did you go along with it?”

  “What, I’m going to turn down a woman who would screw me and plot my death in the same breath? You should have gone to Vegas, baby. No one plays the odds like you.”

  Tamsyn stared at him. “You have to pay for what you did.”

  She cursed herself for trembling. As a young girl, she’d once gone to Norway on holiday with her family, and she could still remember the huge whirlpools churning beside the ship as they’d gone through Saltstraumen. Her father had told her it was the strongest tidal current in the world. She’d stood next to him on the deck, riveted by the sight of those enormous, violent swirls of water like the ones that
Jules Verne had surmised could pull down an entire ship. It was the most beautiful, deadly thing she had ever seen. And here she was again, standing in a maelstrom now, about to be swallowed whole.

  It wasn’t until after she knew she was pregnant that she’d come across his photo in a magazine. She would never forget that moment. It was as if the wind had been physically knocked out of her. She had known the boy was rich—the way he dressed and spoke assured her of that—but she’d had no idea he was the son of a film star. Yet she didn’t tell anyone who it was, certainly not her parents. They’d become the enemy after daily rows over whether or not she should have an abortion. She didn’t want to carry the child to term, but they thought it would be a mistake and that she would regret it.

  Instead, she regretted her daughter, and her fury with Hugh Ashley-Hunt only grew. For weeks after she’d found the photo, she stared at it, withdrawing into a world of imagined scenarios. She knew she would kill him. Even if he wasn’t the one who got her pregnant, he was the one who had destroyed her life, someone who deserved to die.

  But after a few years, another idea had taken hold. Killing him was not good enough. She wanted to humiliate him first, and then take his life.

  And she had done it. The ferry, getting close to Daniel—everything had all fallen into place. Her initial plan to shoot Hugh no longer seemed the best option; poison would be a more insidious, painful death. And by waiting until a few weeks after the wedding, she would inherit his fortune. Money would not erase the pain that Hugh had inflicted on her, but millions of pounds would make the pain and suffering easier to bear.

  Then there was Daniel. She knew he loved her, and after Hugh’s death, nothing would stand in their way.

  “You know something?” Hugh asked. “If you hadn’t walked through the sodding door that day, you could have saved us all the trouble.”

  He dropped the bouquet onto the floor. As Tamsyn reached to snatch the knife, he grabbed her roughly and pressed his lips against hers. She tried to pull back for air, but before she could, he plunged the knife into her and then, just as quickly, pulled it out and stepped back.