‘Here’s the cuckold,’ he said, putting his free hand on the arm of the sofa and pulling himself to his feet. ‘Second-hand goods must really be your thing. I’ve had her seven ways since Sunday, I hope she’s told you?’
Pete watched the gun, the poker in his hand useless. ‘She’s with me now.’
‘I wouldn’t touch her now. But you have to know something: I was the most important thing in her life – I was, I am and I will be.’ He turned the gun towards me. The barrel became a perfect circle. ‘Remember our connection?’ he asked. ‘Two points on the earth’s surface.’ He stroked his finger against the trigger. ‘We’ll always be connected, you and me.’
‘Richard, please –’ I begged.
Pete’s voice – not words, just a shout. He lunged, pushing me sideways, and then another noise filled my ears, seeming to push back the walls with its force. A rush of sensation, not pain, not anything but a rush, but pain then, extreme pain, beyond anything I’d thought the body could endure – like fear but tearing, screaming.
I was on the ground again and there was blood – a lot of blood. I’d been shot. He’d shot me. The pain overwhelmed me and it was a moment before I could focus again. I put my hand up towards the source of it and then thought better. Looking down, I saw that the left shoulder of my jumper was a ragged, bloody mess.
‘Kate.’ Pete’s voice, disembodied.
‘I’m all right – I’m OK.’ The chequering at the edges of my vision again.
‘Can you move? Not your arm – can you get up?’
It took an age but I did it. When I opened my eyes again after another spasm of pain I saw them. Pete had Richard on the floor and was holding him there with a knee pressed between his shoulder blades, his hands on Richard’s forearms. Richard’s face was sideways, crushed into the carpet. He was grunting, ineffectually pushing from his knees to force Pete off him, but Pete was too heavy; he was pinned. The gun was on the carpet six feet away, kicked or thrown out of reach.
‘Kate – can you hear me? I need you to call the police. My phone’s here – in my pocket.’
Beneath him Richard snorted. ‘Why don’t you just finish the job?’ His voice was muffled by the carpet. ‘You’ve got me where you want me, haven’t you?’
‘And give you the satisfaction of knowing I was going to prison?’ Pete brought his knee down harder.
I found the phone in his pocket but I had to put it down again to dial; my left hand was useless. Blood had darkened my entire sleeve now; it was red to the cuff. I suddenly felt afraid – not of Richard, not now, but of dying, losing everything just when I’d been given so much.
‘Sit down,’ said Pete, seeing me sway. I took a step away and fell back on to the sofa just in time. And then the answering voice of emergency services.
Epilogue
The scar on my shoulder looked like a second navel, I thought again as I looked at it in the mirror; the unsightly result of an umbilical cord tied up too quickly by a junior midwife at the end of a long shift. Even with the angry redness gone, it was ugly, the stretched and shiny skin with the twist in its middle a permanent reminder. I’d got into the habit, when I was on my own, of letting my fingers slip under the collar of my jumper to touch it and though I was familiar with it now, months later, it still sometimes surprised me, indelibly written on my body.
Over the summer I had worn cotton shirts and T-shirts with sleeves rather than vest tops, wanting to hide it, but Pete had made a point of not ignoring it, of touching it and talking about it, helping me to think of it as just another part of myself. Now it was winter and so there was no question of it being on display anyway: only he saw it, when we were dressing in the morning or when I burrowed up against him in bed at night.
Richard was tried for attempted murder but in the end was found guilty of causing grievous bodily harm. His sentence was the maximum five years, though he wouldn’t serve all of it. I’d expected it to be hard to face him in court, to feel his eyes move over me in that amused, assessing manner, and it was. He looked ridiculous in the dock in his tailored suit, like an actor playing the part of someone falsely accused, but the façade dropped for an instant when he heard the verdict and the jury saw for themselves one of the sudden switches I’d described to them in my testimony, the flick-knife speed with which the charming veneer could disappear. He couldn’t see all of the public gallery from his position in the courtroom so he hadn’t been aware a minute or so later of Sarah standing up from her seat at the back and slipping silently away or of the look she’d given me just before she did, a look that told me that she could relax now, at least for a while.
I’d thought nothing else about Richard could have shocked me but I was wrong. In the weeks before his trial, another side of his life slid out into the light. Brookwood Properties turned out to be an empire built on sand – not even that. For years Richard had been borrowing money against the projected profits from one development to finance the next, repeating the trick over and over again. When the accounts were scrutinised – after they’d been extracted from the labyrinth of companies and holding companies and fronts that he had constructed over the years – it was discovered that there was no value left in them at all. In fact, he was in debt to the tune of nine million pounds. The whole thing had been a confidence trick, a juggling act which he’d sustained with charm and lies – endless lies.
Immediately after I’d got out of hospital, I’d wondered whether I would be able to live in Yarmouth. The local gossip ran at such a pitch I began to feel like an eighth-rate celebrity, one of the train-wreck variety whose lives are played out on the front pages of the magazines which promise it all Closer, Hotter, Now. After the court case, however, I felt a change in the water, the turn of a tide, and suddenly I was acknowledged in the street and there were friendly hellos in the shops. The best part of it for me was that I was able to salvage a sort of friendship with Sally, tentative though it still was. It helped that three or four months after it all happened, a new partner joined her firm of solicitors, a divorcé about our age. Over an awkward coffee one morning she told me that he’d asked her out and that she liked him. She’d see, she said, blushing.
Things were also easier for her because Tom was living with his father on the mainland while he went through the motions of doing his A-levels. At the beginning of the summer he and a couple of friends were caught doing eighty along the military road in a stolen car and although he’d only received a caution, the sixth-form college he’d had lined up had got wind of it and declined to take him. Living with Gavin, Sally said, was not as cushy as Tom had hoped; his stepmother had the whip-hand and while she had tolerated his attitude when he was only an occasional visitor to her house, things were different now he was there full time.
I gave my hair a final once-over and put the brush back on the table. With all the physiotherapy, the movement in my arm and hand was almost back to normal. The very tips of my fingers were still numb but apparently even that would go, eventually. The reflection of the room I could see behind me in the mirror was still spare but that was by design now. We hadn’t moved across the landing to the main bedroom. It wasn’t just that I didn’t want to be in the room Pete had shared with Alice but that I liked our room better anyway. Nonetheless, Pete had insisted on redecorating the other bedroom and making it a room for guests, the first of whom was about to arrive.
I went downstairs and found my house key, then gave the kitchen one final scan. Everything was ready: the table was laid, the wine was cooling in the fridge, and the casserole was in the oven. The candles could be lit just before we sat down to eat.
Pete turned from the window where he was watching the ferry make its way across the Solent towards us. I went over and watched with him for a minute or two. It was a cold night and late in the year so there were few other lights moving on the water but it was still a beautiful view, the shifting navy surface with the spill of white moonlight across it. I pressed myself into his side. ‘I’d better go,’ I s
aid. ‘It’ll be in by the time I get down there.’
‘You’re nervous,’ he said, smiling slightly.
‘No, I’m not.’
‘She’s your best friend,’ he said. ‘Everything’s going to be fine. Come on, I’ll walk down with you.’
Acknowledgements
I’d like to thank the following people for their invaluable help: Katie Bond, Alexandra Pringle and Colin Midson at Bloomsbury; Laura Longrigg; Claire Paterson, Kirsty Gordon and Cullen Stanley at Janklow and Nesbit; Caroline Bland, Katie Espiner and Cordelia Borchardt. I’d also like to thank Paul and Jenny Whitehouse, and Polly and Sophie.
The Bed I Made Page 33