The Night She Died

by Jenny Blackhurst

  Evie

  I can’t pinpoint the exact moment I realised that the person I’d grown to rely on like a sister had grown to hate me in return. Was it the way she would turn away when Richard and I kissed? Or the air of contempt rather than appreciation when I bought her gifts? She looked the way I felt when my father turned up with expensive trinkets, when once upon a time I’d been able to make her face light up with just a plastic ice drink maker. I should have known how she felt about Richard really, I mean look how intensely Rebecca fell for the people in her life. She doesn’t do things by halves – she loves or she hates. She breathes life or she kills.

  I’ll admit, even I was shocked when she suggested I throw myself off a cliff. I watched her face as she said the words, as though it was the most logical thing, like she was suggesting we go to the cinema or for a curry. Make them believe you’re dead.

  And the more I thought about it, the better the idea seemed. Alive, things were messy: the truth about my affair with James, my part in the death of his father – our father. I’d never really been good at sticking around to face the music. But dead, I could walk away from every mistake I’d ever made, every wrong turn, every bad decision. The problem was, there was only one person I knew who had the power to make it happen.

  Did I know then, that my best friend planned to betray me? That on the night of my wedding she would let me plunge to my death knowing there would be no boat waiting for me? I don’t think it was until I saw the rock we’d placed to mark my safe spot had been moved that I knew for certain.

  It was a week after Becky’s suggestion and I’d thought of nothing but what I was going to do about the baby, and whether I could make my death work. There was no doubt I could fake a cliff jump but making a new life work after my death would take money and planning. That’s what I would need my father for.

  ‘How is he today?’ I asked Yasmin as she ladled pasta into a bowl and placed it on a tray.

  ‘I’ve never seen him like this,’ she replied. ‘He’s not coping, Miss.’

  Since my mother had passed away I’d begged Papa to leave the house and come and stay with Richard and I, but he’d been his usual obstinate self and refused. Offers for me to come and stay with him had been waved away with equal brevity. Hearing about his steady decline made me realise I should have tried harder.

  Seeing my strong, handsome papa so pale and grey, black stubble unruly and dark circles shadowing his eyes, was painful, and I almost didn’t say what I’d gone all that way to say. When I walked into the sitting room and saw him sitting there staring at my mother’s empty chair I was certain that one more shock would kill him. But he looked up, saw me hovering in the doorway with the tray of pasta and smiled.

  ‘Evelyn,’ he started to rise but I waved him to sit back down.

  ‘Yasmin says if you don’t eat this she’ll come in and feed you like a senile old man.’

  Papa looked down at the pasta and grimaced. ‘She thinks I need senile old man food. Maybe when she cooks a duck I’ll eat. Come here, sit down. To what do I owe this visit? And don’t tell me no reason because I can see in your face, you have something to tell me.’

  I didn’t move. Suddenly I was seventeen years old again, having to tell my father I was having a baby, only this time it was so much worse. This time I knew the reason my parents had tried so hard to keep us apart, why they had lied to convince me to abort our child.

  ‘I’m having a baby, Papa,’ I said, and before he could express joy at his first grandchild, before the news that he was going to be a grandpops could sink in, I added, ‘And James is the father.’

  Over the next hour we had talked together, my papa and me, more than we had in my whole life. He told me how my mother had got pregnant by him at sixteen and they had decided to terminate the pregnancy, how Mum had never really got over it, and how, when she had her affair with James Sr and found out she was pregnant again – this time with me – none of them had been able to go through the pain of losing a second child. I told him how I felt about James, and how I couldn’t lose him or my baby again. I’d expected him to rage and shout, have me shipped off to Paris or Dubai, have James arrested or shot, but instead he nodded. We could never be together in public, he said. It would only ever be a shameful secret. Is that how I wanted to live?

  No, I replied. I want to die.

  That night my father had waited himself in the boat tethered to some rocks. I’d known he wouldn’t be present at the ceremony, and also that people wouldn’t be particularly surprised that he’d been held up by work. I’d never told Becky about Papa’s involvement, and so she’ll never know how many practice runs we made, how I knew my positioning off by heart without the need of any marker. How Papa had dropped me straight off with Phillip who had driven me the hundred miles to the ferry.

  I was out of the country before the helicopters turned up to look for me. Once I was safely in France Phillip returned my passport to my father who used my key to get it into my old home when Richard was out. Yasmin joined me that evening, James had to wait – although my father called him the instant I was safe in the car. I understand that when I gave him the heads-up Richard and Becky were on their way he played the grieving lover part very well, practically emptying out a week’s rubbish into his drawing room and having to clear it all up again before Camille returned.

  Part of me had still hoped, as my arms cut through the water that night to reach my father’s boat, that a second boat would be tethered to the rocks, one that had been left by my best friend so that I might escape into the darkness. Miles from shore with no boat – even if I had managed to make a lucky jump from the danger spot she’d marked, there would be no getting ashore. The most I could hope for would be to drag myself onto the rocks below and hope to be found before I froze to death. What a wicked web we weave.

  It’s been nine months since I ‘died’ and James is about to meet his untimely death. It’s felt like an eternity but arrangements had to be made, and we didn’t want Camille’s suspicions aroused by playing our hand too soon. Monique is a month old as we await our first Christmas. Her doting grandpops has spent far too much money and the small flat we occupy in Paris looks like Santa’s grotto.

  And me? Well I’ve had my fun, thanks to the tracking software I installed on Richard’s and Becky’s phones, and our home computer. It was a bit of a blow when Becky discovered hers but since she was usually stuck to Richard’s side I could guess where they would both be from his. I often check in on him – despite the awful way I treated him I do love him like a brother, although I understand that no one would ever believe that if they knew what I’d done. I even went home once, although that was stupid and careless of me, but I was getting bored and homesick, and I look so different these days with my short dark bob and brown contact lenses. I wanted to take my camera back – I hated leaving it but it was the only way I’d convince Becky that I was really dead. She knew the only way I’d leave that camera behind was if I never made it ashore and now she’s keeping it for herself, just like the rest of my life. The necklace and the water was a spur of the moment thing, I wish I could have seen her face. I wonder if it was her who found it, or Richard? I regretted it afterwards, it was never my intention to upset him – I just wanted her to think she was going crazy. Thank goodness they never mentioned it to my father – he’d have hit the roof if he knew about my fun and games. On the whole though, I’ve been waiting. Waiting and watching as she tries on my life to see how it fits, making her think that poor, distraught Camille – who lost everything on the night I died – was spying on her, playing games with her. And just when she thinks she’s safe, that I’m dead and gone – that’s when I will make my move. Because dead women tell no tales. And dead women can’t take revenge.