The Night She Died

by Jenny Blackhurst

  He nods.

  ‘Yes, Camille knew we had been together, but after my “death” there would be no reason for her to make that public. It would just embarrass her. She would inherit everything except some money we’d both squirrelled away. Camille doesn’t love me anyway, she loves the lifestyle I give her, the prestige. She could keep all that.’

  ‘Evie didn’t contact you.’ Richard’s quiet voice comes from the floor. James looks up, as though he’s almost forgotten he’s telling a story.

  ‘No,’ he says, his voice cracking. ‘No, she never got in touch. I waited and waited for her to get in contact, to tell me she was okay. We weren’t going to have much contact in those early days, in case Camille got wind of something, but she was supposed to send me a message from a pay as you go phone to confirm she was okay and then later details of where to meet her, disguised as a marketing email. At first I thought I had the date wrong, then perhaps that I was supposed to meet her somewhere and I’d forgotten where. I went to every place we’d ever visited together. But still, weeks after the fall and nothing. That’s how I know she didn’t survive. That’s how I know she’s dead. I’m so sorry, Richard, but she’s not coming back.’

  The night of the wedding

  95

  Evie

  ‘What are you doing here, James?’

  Her voice carried across the air and it stopped him in his tracks. He turned to face her and she was hit once again by just how beautiful he was. Even when his features were etched with pain.

  ‘You know why I’m here, Evie. I came to ask you to reconsider.’

  ‘The wedding? You’re too late. It’s done.’ She was being deliberately obtuse – she knew he hadn’t come here to stop her marrying Richard.

  ‘Not the wedding. It’s very nice, by the way,’ he gestured to the hotel in the background, to the lawn where her guests were yet to miss her presence. ‘And you look beautiful as ever. Your husband must be very proud.’

  ‘He is,’ Evie set her chin in defiance.

  ‘He’s a good man, Evie. He doesn’t deserve this.’

  Evie felt her frustration growing, but it was mingled with guilt. She knew Richard didn’t deserve what she was about to do, but wasn’t it better than the alternative?

  ‘It’s better this way,’ she said softly. ‘Richard will inherit everything now. If I hadn’t married him he’d be left with nothing.’

  ‘He’d have the truth. Don’t you think he’d prefer that?’

  ‘What, to know his wife was in love with someone else? What do you think? This way he will be sad for a while but his memories of our life together will be intact. He will get over me, in time he’ll marry again. Maybe he’ll settle down with Rebecca, like he should have done in the first place.’

  James moved closer to her. ‘Don’t do it, Evie. There has to be another way.’

  ‘There is no other way! Don’t you see that by now? After all our fathers have done to keep us apart, you think Dominic would let us run away into the sunset now? And Camille? Do you think she would roll over and watch her husband walk away with his half-sister? No,’ Evie shook her head. ‘If they know that you and I have disappeared together they will never stop until they find us. And the press?’ she gave a chuckle. ‘The press would have a field day. Not only does one of the richest men in England desert his wife for his lover but his . . .’ she stopped, unable to finish her sentence. ‘And there’s something else.’

  ‘What?’ James was thrown. ‘What else can there be?’

  ‘I’ll tell you when I see you again,’ she replied.

  She couldn’t tell him what else there was, or any more about what she had planned. She couldn’t tell him about the people across the cliffs, or Becky, or the boat. It was better this way, better if he thought it was all real, if they all thought that. Evie put her hand on her stomach and knew that she’d been wrong all those years ago, when she’d made the vow never to love someone so much that it made her want to die. Because she would die for the child she was carrying. And that’s exactly what she had to do.

  Now

  96

  Rebecca

  ‘I need to go back,’ Richard grasps my arm as we reach the car. He looks as though he might fall over without my support and I pull him in close, wishing this could have been different for him. If only he could have grieved then moved on, like he was supposed to. Why did he have to start digging around?

  ‘Why, did you forget something?’ I turn to look back at the house. James has already closed the door behind us, retreated into his grief. I wonder if he feels better for telling the truth now, or worse. I think of him sitting in that tiny room, staring at the blank TV screen, watching his phone and waiting for Evie’s call. A call that never came. At which point did he begin to panic? When she was a day late . . . two? How strange it must have been for him, to be waiting while we searched, while we mourned, and then for his grieving to begin weeks after the world had thought her dead.

  ‘Not in there,’ he looks at James’ house in disgust. ‘I need to go back to where she . . .’ he doesn’t finish his sentence. That spot – a beautiful place for weddings and picnics – will forever be, to us, where she. . . ‘To the bottom.’

  He believes every word, I can see that, and now he wants to see for himself. What does he think he will find? Her bag of clothes, abandoned and rotting, tucked into a crevice? I searched for them in the week we spent there after her death – kicking myself that I hadn’t asked her where she’d put the bag. But if we find them then he has his proof, and maybe he can move on – with me. So I take his hand and agree to help him look.

  The waves lap against the rocks, so calm and serene that I can barely imagine them taking the life of my best friend. Evie was far too alive for something this beautiful, this ordinary, to have robbed her of it. I can imagine her swimming in there now, her strong arms cutting powerfully through the water, pulling herself ashore, panting, exhausted but not beaten. Despite what James had said about knowing she had not survived the fall, it is standing here that I can feel her, now more than ever, alive.

  ‘Look everywhere, for anything, anything at all.’ Richard appears briefly over the rocks and then disappears again. Unlike me he can’t feel her here, he can’t even bring himself to look at the sea and will search the shore beyond. He isn’t looking for Evie any more, he is looking for evidence of her death, and of her betrayal.

  97

  Rebecca

  It is nearly a mile from the spot where Evie would have landed that I find it. It is smaller than I remember, maybe that’s why I couldn’t find it the first time I looked, or maybe I was so scared of being caught that I didn’t look properly. A brown hessian knapsack inside a plastic carrier bag stuffed inside a hastily carved out hole and covered by a pile of rocks. This is the final confirmation I need: she never came back for it.

  The brown jumper I’d chosen for her and a pair of denim jeggings, some socks folded inside. I lift them to my face and breathe in her scent – even after all this time in the rain-sodden earth they still retain her smell. A ziplock bag with a small wad of notes – these are the only things that Evie chose to take with her into her new life. There is one other thing – the only way I know this is not a decoy bag or a change of clothes left by a hitchhiker – and I know now that the owner isn’t coming back for it. It too is wrapped in plastic to protect it from the elements, although it probably hasn’t worked in years. Evie’s first camera.

  98

  Rebecca

  ‘Nothing,’ Richard pants as he rounds back over the hill where I have been sitting, staring into the sea. ‘I’ve walked over a mile, between us we’ve reached every rock and crevice on the entire coast and still, nothing. Do you think he was lying?’

  ‘Maybe he was telling the truth,’ I say quietly. I can’t look him in the eye, maybe I won’t ever again. ‘Maybe she came back for it. Maybe someone else found it first and had no idea what it was.’

  He grunts and sits down next to me
. Together we look out across the deep blue water in silence.

  ‘Would you want to know?’ The crack in my voice makes Richard turn to me. ‘Do you really want to know what happened to her? Or is it better if we can just keep going?’

  I’ll tell him about the bag, I have to if I want him to believe what James told him, which is, after all, mostly the truth. Evie had planned to survive the jump and start a new life in Paris, a life with her baby and the man she loved. What James hadn’t mentioned was that she expected a boat to be waiting for her that night. A boat that she was certain to be there because it had been arranged by her best friend, who she would never have believed would betray her – leave her in the freezing cold water with no way of getting ashore but to swim, in a wedding dress, in the darkness. Poor Evie. Poor, stupid Evie.

  Eight months after the wedding

  99

  Richard

  ‘Richard Bradley. I’m here to see—’

  The nurse smiled kindly. She was thin and had too much skin for her face, it made her impossible to age. She had what Evie would call – would have called – ‘resting bitch face’, like she’d be more likely to give you a lecture for wasting NHS time before even taking your temperature. But when she smiled her face transformed and he could see why she was a nurse.

  ‘Of course, Mr Bradley. Rebecca is doing fine now. Come with me.’

  When she pulled the curtain back Rebecca was sitting with her feet on the hospital bed, her knees pulled up to her chin, arms wrapped around them protectively. She looked at him, her eyes brimming with confusion – he wondered for a moment if she even knew who he was, if she was expecting someone else. Was there anyone else in her life? Or was he her entire world now that Evie was gone?

  ‘Richard,’ she breathed sounding relieved. Had she thought he wouldn’t come? She had given the nurses his name and phone number, she had asked them to call him here in the middle of the night.

  ‘Becks, what happened to you? I get this call from the hospital saying I needed to come straight away because,’ he lowered his voice. ‘They said you were sleepwalking.’

  ‘I don’t remember. I, she . . . I followed her, she was there and I thought if I could catch her I could . . .’

  The nurse placed a hand on Richard’s shoulder. ‘The paramedic who brought her in said she’d been sleepwalking, they thought. She was in the thinnest of T-shirts and some pyjama bottoms – looked frightened half to death. It was a taxi driver who called it in – didn’t want to go near her in case she’d been attacked and lost it. When the paramedic got to her she started thrashing around, shouting and screaming. If she hadn’t calmed down and gone with them willingly—’

  ‘Thank you,’ Richard moved towards the bed slowly, as though she might start screaming again at any moment.

  ‘I’ll leave you two to it. The doctor has said she’s fine to go home whenever she’s ready,’ she gave Rebecca’s shoulder a squeeze. ‘Best of luck, Mrs Bradley.’

  Richard cringed at the woman’s mistake and glanced at Rebecca to see if she’d noticed but she was staring at her fingers so intently he wondered if she was willing them not to do something.

  ‘The nurses asked me to bring you something to wear,’ Richard reached into the bag and pulled out some jeans and an old jumper of Evie’s. He wasn’t even sure of the size difference between the two women but it was all he had access to in the middle of the night. ‘I hope these are okay?’

  Rebecca took them without comment and he turned his back so that she could change. He jumped at the feel of her hand on his shoulder and when he turned to face her again she was close enough to kiss. She’d lost weight, Evie’s clothes seemed to swamp her and she looked so scared and . . . exhausted. Richard wrapped his arms around her and pulled her close, breathing in the scent of Evie’s fabric conditioner that lingered after all this time on her jumper. Rebecca folded herself into him, little jumps every now and again telling him she was crying quietly.

  How had he been so stupid, so blind, so naïve? While she was keeping him together, all the time since Evie’s death she had been slowly falling apart and she’d had no one there for her.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Becky,’ he whispered into her hair. ‘I’ll be there for you now. I’ll be better.’

  100

  Rebecca

  I hear him say the words, even though he sounds like he’s speaking underwater. It felt so real at the time, seeing her in my bedroom, following her out into the road. Then there were lights everywhere and people talking at me, telling me it was okay – and she was gone, or maybe she’d never been there in the first place, just like the other times.

  But it’s going to be okay, it was just another dream, one of the dreams that have plagued me these last months, but they will stop with time. And as I stand there in her clothes, smelling of her as the nurses fuss around me, calling me Mrs Bradley, I know that she’s gone and she can’t hurt me any more. I’ve won.

  Epilogue

  Nine months after the wedding

  Curled up in a ball on the sofa, Richard lets out a gentle snore. I move around the house without waking him, switching off the Christmas lights on the tree and rearranging some of the decorations. Richard had wondered whether or not to put up a tree at all until I’d convinced him that Evie would never want him to ignore Christmas entirely. It will be our first one without her, although sometimes the ghost of her is so tangible it feels as though she’s in the room with us. Slowly though, things are getting easier. Richard is starting to heal and I have been there every step of the way, patient and respectful.

  I take out the glasses from the table, put them into the dishwasher and wipe my hands on the oversized T-shirt of Evie’s I’d borrowed with the slogan Ambition made me do it on the front. It swamps me like a dwarfish thief in a giant’s robe but it’s comfortable and she won’t be needing it. I go back through to where Richard is still sleeping soundly.

  ‘Wake up, sleepy head,’ I whisper, switching off the TV and shaking his arm. ‘It’s finished.’

  He opens his eyes, looking confused at first, then grins at me. ‘I wasn’t asleep.’

  ‘Oh right, you always snore when you’re awake, do you? Don’t worry, I won’t post the pictures of you drooling on Facebook.’

  ‘Okay, you got me. Did they catch the bad guy?’

  ‘Come on, the bad guy always gets their comeuppance. What kind of film would it be if they just got away with it?’

  I lean down to pick up the half-empty bowl of popcorn off the floor at the same time as Richard starts to sit up. Our faces are so close that they are almost touching. My heart is pounding and this time, nine months after Evie left us, neither of us moves away. There is the smallest moment’s hesitation on his face before Richard leans in and kisses me. I respond automatically, my hand reaching around to run through the short soft hair on the back of his head. His hand rests in the small of my back, gently nudging me closer. It lasts no more than thirty seconds but it’s everything I’ve been waiting for. When we pull apart I start to apologise – was it too soon? Have I ruined all that time planning and waiting by rushing things now? But Richard’s face isn’t angry or embarrassed.

  ‘I should go,’ I say, and start to stand. But he grabs my hand.

  ‘Stay,’ he says, and it’s not a question. Like a nervous schoolchild I follow him upstairs and I see him hesitate at the door to the room he and Evie once shared. But the hesitation is fleeting and he pushes open the door.

  ‘Oh damn, my phone is downstairs,’ I say, not wanting to break the moment and bring us crashing back to reality but my contraceptive pill is in my purse and I can’t risk missing it. Especially if tonight is going to end the way I hope it will.

  Downstairs I flick on the living room light and my blood runs cold. On the coffee table, propped up against my handbag is an envelope that wasn’t there five minutes ago. I rip open the envelope and pull out a newspaper article. There is a photo of James Addlington smiling back at me in a smart suit and tie,
and as I read the article my mouth dries up, the elation of moments ago evaporated.

  Sudden disappearance of business tycoon leads to

  suicide fears: wallet and wedding ring found on

  ‘suicide bridge’

  Fears are growing for missing business mogul James Addlington after a wallet and wedding ring believed to be that of the twenty-eight-year-old were found at a spot dubbed by locals as ‘suicide bridge’ yesterday. Addlington has been missing for three days now and a source close to the family say they are ‘frantic with worry’. His father, James Addlington Sr, died in a house fire several years ago, leaving his business operations to his son, making him one of the richest men in Britain. His wife, Camille Addlington, was not available for comment.

  Before I can even begin to wonder what it means and who left it here my phone buzzes inside my bag. I pull it out and look at the message from an unknown number.

  It’s a photograph, taken less than ten minutes ago in this very room. Richard and I are sharing our first kiss in years, his hand on my back, mine around his neck. The photographer is across the room – judging from the angle it has come from the computer that sits on the desk in the corner, where a webcam sits unassumingly. I think of the Cerbus software that had been on my phone, and now I know that it wasn’t Camille who put it there. It was someone who had unfiltered access to my phone, and to her own home computer. Someone who obviously didn’t trust me as much as I thought she did. My heart plummets as another text from the same number flashes on the screen. The words make my vision of my perfect future with Richard crash down around me.

  Enjoying my life?

  Now