by NC Marshall
“Did Jess know... about you and Lola?” I ask, struggling to believe that Lola would deny a father the right to see his own child, to even know that he was a dad.
“No, the last time I saw Lola was the night we slept together. When I met up with Jess again after I came to England, I assumed Lola had never said anything, it was obvious that Jess had never found out about us. I wanted to tell her, almost did on one occasion, but I couldn’t.” He shakes his head and looks me in the eye, “I was a coward.”
I pick up my glass and drain the melted ice from the bottom of it. My mouth is so dry that my tongue has stuck to its roof. “What are you going to do? Are you going to confront Lola?” I ask.
“I don’t know what to do. She’ll probably just deny it, but it is clear that he’s mine.”
I nod, not wanting to agree, but I know that even if Liam wasn’t Adams double, the dates still work out almost spot on to the time Liam was born. Lola had fooled us all into believing Liam had been born early, just as Josh had been, but I now know that wasn’t the truth.
I look at my watch. It’s getting late and Dan will be wondering where I am. I jump to my feet and apologise to Adam, although it doesn’t sound very sincere. Even though I want to, I still can’t warm to him and I don’t know why. I tell Adam I’ll call him tomorrow after he’s had some time to think, then leave the pub and head home, totally unaware that I’m being followed.
Chapter 34
Jess
The light gets a little brighter, enabling me to finally see who has approached me from behind.
Lola stands with her hands in the pockets of her short red padded jacket. Her long black patent leather boots reach her denim-clad knees. The bottoms of her boots are caked in mud. Her short hair is whipped back from her face by the wind.
“Lola,” I say, as I near her. I can’t hide the disappointment in my voice that it’s not Matt who is standing where she is now. “What are you doing here?”
I assume that Matt has told her I’ve been calling him, and she’s worried that I’ll be standing here all night on my own. I smile, thinking of her concern, always such a good friend.
“Why didn’t you just call me if you were worried?” I ask, holding my mobile in the air to prove that I have it with me, that I’ve not disconnected myself from all civilization. “You didn’t need to come all the way here,” I say loudly so that she can hear me over the increasing strength of the wind, “I’m all right. Honestly,” I lie unconvincingly.
“That's not why I’m here,” she replies, her tone impassive.
As she steps closer to me, I can see that she looks like hell. Lola’s generally impeccably made up face is pale, and she has black patches under her eyes where her thick makeup has smudged and started to run.
“You all right, Lo?” I ask, starting to get a little worried. God, I hope that nothing’s happened to Matt or Ryan. “Is everyone okay at home?” I ask. She doesn’t reply, but manages a slight nod that calms my wandering mind. “So what’s wrong, then?” I ask as she eventually reaches where I’m standing. She still refuses to look me in the eye. Instead, she keeps her face bowed to the ground. “Why are you so quiet, Lola? What has happened?” I ask again, trying gently to coax her to open up and talk.
“You need to know,” says Lola simply. Her voice sounds rough and gravelly; not light, bouncy and carefree like it usually is.
“Know what?” I ask, now thoroughly baffled.
“It wasn’t meant to happen,” she replies as she slips a packet of cigarettes out of her pocket and turns away from the direction of the wind to light one. I thought she’d quit smoking, but she must have started again. I feel disappointed at her attempts to stay off them, and now understand that her gruff sounding voice is the result of once again smoking thirty a day. She blows smoke into the air, and it flows in a graceful line straight into my face, forcing me to cough.
“What wasn’t meant to happen? Lola, you’re starting to scare me. What are you talking about?”
“Me and him,” Lola replies. She spits the words at me as if they were venomous.
“You and who, Lola?”
“Him... Adam.”
I swallow hard and narrow my eyes at Lola, who has now managed to raise her head and is looking me in the eye.
“What about you and Adam?” I ask, genuinely intrigued as to where this is all heading.
“We... we slept together back in Australia. You had split up with him, and you were with Matt.” Tears gather in her eyes. “It was my last night in Australia, we were both drunk. It wasn’t meant to happen.” She takes a final draw on her cigarette, dropping it to the ground before stubbing it out under her foot.
The bile rises in my throat and my breathing quickens. Rage hits me full force. I fight hard to keep it under control. “I thought you never went back to Perth. You told me you didn’t go back there!”
“I lied.”
“And you didn’t tell me. Neither of you told me, after all, this time?”
I remember back to when I first returned from Australia. Adam was all I could think about, all I wanted at that point. I was lost for a while until Lola returned home the following year. She was the only one I’d confided in about Adam, the only one who had known him, and of his existence until yesterday when I told Matt. Why didn’t she tell me? To save her own skin?
“I didn’t want you to find out like this Jess, but Matt has been with Ryan all night drinking and...”
“Does Ryan know about me and Adam?” I ask, wondering if Matt has told him what a disgusting and conniving person his sister really is.
“No, he just said you had a fight and that you have separated.”
My heart flutters.
“Matt left his phone in our apartment,” says Lola, without an ounce of remorse in her voice.“I listened to the voice messages you left him earlier tonight. You mentioned Adam. I know he is in England.”
“Why didn’t you tell me, Lola?” I ask, my voice laced with hurt, with betrayal.
“I... I couldn’t,” Lola answers, her voice rising to match the volume of my own.
“Why not? You knew I would have forgiven you Lola, maybe not straight away, but I would have, and it would have helped me move on and get on with my own life.”
I mean those words. I would have forgiven Lola. After everything that we had been through together, she is my closest friend. As for Adam, well, I suppose this makes me realise that I’d made the right move in deciding not to go back to Australia with him tomorrow.
“Why didn’t you tell me, Lola?” I ask again. I reluctantly lower my voice as she sobs quietly. I can't console her. She doesn’t deserve any pity.
“Because that’s not all that happened,” she says through muffled sobs, “I... I fell pregnant.”
I put my hand to my mouth. Lola was pregnant with Adam’s baby. She must have had an abortion, she has gone all this time having to live with that. But then she fell pregnant straight away, Liam had been conceived shortly after she returned from Australia. Unless… suddenly, reality hits me. I stagger backwards, away from Lola.
“Liam,” I say, putting my hand to my mouth. “Liam is Adam’s son?”
Lola holds a hand to her head and rubs at her temples.
“So, Adam doesn’t know he has a son?” I ask. I know that if he’d known he wouldn’t have kept it from me. Although, I dislike him for keeping a one night stand with one of my closest friends from me. I very much doubt that his conscience would allow him to keep the fact that the little boy who I thought was my nephew is actually his son.
Lola shakes her head, and I feel slightly disgusted by her.
“How did you know I was up here tonight?” I ask, suddenly aware of the fact that nobody other than Matt knows that this is where I am.
Lola removes her hands from her pockets and crosses them over her body. She is swaying from side to side, a vacant expression on her face.
“Like I said, Matt has been with Ryan all night. Matt’s been drinking a
nd is in a bit of a state, so Ryan took him back next door to his apartment to make sure he got to bed to sleep it off.”
She takes a deep breath, her voice quavering, now back to its normal tone. “I listened to the voice mail that you left for him, asking him to meet you here.”
So he hadn’t been ignoring my calls at all. A brief jolt of hope hits me, but it’s quickly replaced by the burning fury I feel towards the woman standing in front of me. “And Ryan’s still with Matt? He doesn’t even know you’re here?”
She shakes her head. I shake my own back at her in sheer disbelief, not able to take in any further information. “I can’t believe you could do that! Let my brother think that he is the father to another man’s son.”
I remember back to last Christmas at the lake house, and have an image in my head of Ryan and Liam playing in the garden. Ryan was swinging him around, hugging him and throwing him into the air and onto his back. Liam was laughing, loving every moment, with no clue that the man he has known all his life as his daddy, wasn’t.
I feel sick. I rub at my stomach as my head spins. “Ryan will be heartbroken,” I say. Tears fill my eyes just thinking about my little brother, so innocent in all this.
“He can’t ever know, Jess. This will break him, he loves Liam so much. He will never forgive me.”
“Well, you should have thought of that before you slept with your best friend’s ex, and then lied to Ryan, allowing him to think he has been bringing up his own son for the past four years,” I snap back, a sudden, overwhelming hatred overtaking me.
I'm so hurt. Not because of what Lola and Adam did to me, but because of what Lola has done to Ryan. How can anyone be so selfish, so evil and manipulative? I need to get away from her. I can't even bear to look at her at the moment. I need time to think.
She is crying loudly now. Her whole body is trembling, her frame silhouetted by the bright moonlight behind her.
“I need to go,” I say bitterly. My head is still pounding and I need to get away from here, away from her.
Lola’s head snaps up. She looks at me as though I’m lying to her. “Where are you going?” she asks. She sounds scared, terrified actually.
“Anywhere that’s away from you,” I say bluntly.
She moves to my side, blocking the entrance to the pathway leading down to my parked car. She is tall, and towers over my much smaller frame.
“You can’t tell Ryan, Jess, he will never forgive me. We need to work out what we are going to do.” Her voice has risen again, only now it’s adopted a slightly hysterical tone.
I shake my head and turn to walk away. Before I know it, she pushes me backwards, and I fall to the ground. She staggers towards me, and then places herself on top of me so I am unable to move. She slaps me across the face; the force behind it is so hard that I see bright spots in front of my eyes for a few seconds. I push her off me.
Somehow, I manage to get to my feet and stagger further back, away from her. I’m shocked. I can’t believe what she has just done. I rub at my burning cheek and look around to see which way is best to get back to the path without another confrontation. Lola obviously needs to take some time out and calm down before we talk again. The wind catches the bottom of my skirt, throwing it into the air and revealing the tattoo on my leg. I catch Lola looking at it. She has the same tattoo. We had them done in Australia. The matching small black ink markings are the Japanese symbol of trust. What a joke!
I circle around her, unaware that I am nearing the cliff edge. I’ll walk on a little further to get out of her way. Lola stands only a few metres away watching, not moving and silent. I start to walk away, putting more space between us but suddenly my foot slips.
A few rocks fall over the edge and to the beach below. More earth gives way. I fall to my knees, teetering on the cliff edge. I grip the grass on either side of me, digging my fingernails into the soggy earth as much as I can. I hear the ocean, loud and forceful beneath me, but I don’t dare look down to see it. I need to concentrate on backing away from the edge.
I steal a quick glance behind me. I can see Lola, who is now running to my side. Thank God, she’ll help me up. But she doesn’t. Instead, she stops a couple of feet away from where I am and watches me struggle. I manage to move a few centimetres, but the rocks under my knees start to break up and fall.
“Help me, Lola!” I plead, feeling my knees lose their support as more earth crumbles to the beach below. But she makes no attempt to move. Her face takes on a strange look that has a glimmer of amusement in it. Then, she starts to run towards me.
There’s a sudden movement, so quick I barely see it, and she shoves me hard in my lower back, causing me to scream out in pain. The jolt causes the weight of my body to shift, it rocks me forward off my knees and sends me over the edge.
I feel the ground leave my feet as I move into the air. I can hear the crashing sound of the waves beneath me growing louder. The stars in the sky seem to brighten as the beach below closes in. I reach out with my hands, clutching nothing but empty space. I plummet downwards, moving closer towards what I know is going to be my death. And then, everything is black.
Chapter 35
It doesn’t take me long to realise that there’s someone behind me. The roads are quiet and whoever it is isn’t doing a very good job of remaining inconspicuous. Although they have stayed a good few car lengths behind me, I know it’s the same car that has been tailing me since I left the pub car park back at the lake. I decide to keep driving. I don’t fancy getting out of the car and confronting whoever it is on a lonely country road so late at night.
I slow down and adjust my rear view mirror, trying to get a better view behind me. The car doesn’t slow and creeps quickly into view. The headlights blind me at first, but I can now clearly see the car and immediately know the identity of my mystery stalker. I pull over into a lay-by and patiently wait until the car pulls up behind mine. I hear its engine switch off. The driver gets out to meet me at the side of the deserted road.
“What are you doing following me, Dan?” I ask bemused, peering into the window, to the back seat of the car where I can see Josh on the right-hand side, sound asleep, dressed in his pyjamas. I look back towards my husband and tilt my head, silently pushing him for an explanation for his being here. Dan rubs at the dark stubble on his face, then rests his hand on the back of his neck.
“I called you five times earlier tonight,” says Dan. To say he seems a little pissed off is an understatement. I scowl at him, then reach for my mobile from my pocket and check the display. Sure enough, I have missed five missed calls, and have three unanswered texts from when I was at Milton Point. How did I not hear my phone ring? How had I not noticed the missed calls?
I suddenly feel guilty. “God, I’m sorry, Dan. Time just seems to have slipped away today, you must have been worried sick.” I shuffle uncomfortably from foot to foot. The gravel under my boots crunches loudly.
“I called your mum eventually. I assumed you must still be with her and Ryan,” Dan continues. “She said you had left them hours ago. Where have you been, Nat?”
“I went up to Milton Point,” I tell Dan honestly. “It’s been a hard day. I just needed some time alone.” Tears fill my eyes, although I’m not too sure why. Maybe the importance of today’s date has finally hit me.
“I thought you might have gone to Milton Point, so I went up to find you. But when I arrived you weren’t there.” Dan shakes his head and chuckles sarcastically. “I must say I was a little confused to see your car parked at a bar as I passed on my way back home.”
Shit! Now I know where this conversation is going. He must have seen Adam follow me out of the pub, saw me saying goodbye to him at the doorway. He thinks I’m seeing someone, that I’m having an affair.
Dan seems to read my thoughts. “Who is he, Nat?”
“It’s not what you think Dan, you have it totally wrong.”
“Really? Then enlighten me. Tell me who the hell the guy is that I saw you com
ing out of a pub with, at nine o’clock on a Friday night. Who is this mystery man that you’ve not told anyone about?”
I stay silent, wondering where to start, already feeling anxious with guilt for purposely lying to him during the past couple of months.
“Are you having an affair, Nat?” says Dan. He sounds angry, but it’s the disappointment in his tone that hurts me the most. “Is the baby his?”
I stare at him, my mouth falling open, anger building gradually inside me. God, he’s got a nerve! He’s seen me with another man for a couple of minutes, and jumps to the conclusion I am pregnant with his baby. I know Dan has always had a jealous streak. If I’m honest, I’ve always found it quite an attractive quality. I sometimes like the way he thinks of me as only his. Tonight though, it’s nothing but ugly.
I hold up my hands to him in protest. “You are so far off the mark Dan, how could you even think I’d do that?” My head snaps away from Dan’s disgusted stare, and instinctively moves to Josh. He is still sound asleep in the car where Dan left him, thank God, I don’t want him to see us like this.
“The man you saw me with is Jess’s ex,” I say, as if he is stupid.
“What, you mean some ex-boyfriend?” asks Dan, undoubtedly perplexed.
“Try ex-husband,” I reply, not bothering to attempt to play down my sisters past actions. I’m too angry, too exhausted. “He was married to Jess when she was in Australia. It was a brief affair, but it happened,” I add frankly.
Dan looks at me, dumbfounded, as I continue.
“He’s here visiting his sister from Australia, and I managed to track him down through one of Jess’s old e-mails. I thought he might have some answers as to why she died. She didn’t fall from the cliff that night, Dan. The police think she jumped, and I wanted to know if Adam was the reason why she did it.” I hate myself for once again going against my promise to Ryan, but Dan has left me with little choice. I’m sure Ryan will understand my telling him, given the circumstances.