by Ruth Ware
Clare hadn’t arrived yet – I know that for sure since I met her in the drive coming up to the house, but it could have been any of the others.
But why? Why would they want to destroy me like this – destroy James, destroy Clare?
I try to think through the possibilities.
Melanie seems the least likely. Yes, she was there while I was out on my run, in fact she was one of the few people who was up and about at the time of the second run. But I can’t believe that she could possibly care about me or James enough to do this. Why risk everything to incriminate someone she’d never even met? And besides, she’d gone by the time James arrived, by the time … by the time … I shut my eyes, trying to shut out the pictures of James lying shattered and bloody on the wooden floor. She could still have swapped the cartridge, a tiny voice whispers in the back of my mind. She could have done that any time. And maybe that would explain why she left in such a hurry …? It’s true. She could have swapped the cartridge. But surely she couldn’t have predicted the rest – the open door, the gun, the struggle …
Tom, then. He had the means – he was there in the house when my phone was, he was there at the shooting. And – it suddenly strikes me – he was the one who sent Clare driving off into the forest alone. What did make her suddenly leave like that? We only have his word about what he said to her, and now, in the light of what’s happened, the fact that she misheard him so radically seems a little convenient. Would she really just go haring off into the night like that, without double-checking? Nina was the doctor, after all. She was James’s best chance of survival.
What if he told her to go? He could have said anything – that Nina wasn’t coming, that she’d said to get going and wait for her at the hospital. As for motive … I think back to the drunken conversation we had about his husband and James. If only I’d paid attention. If only I’d listened! But I was bored – bored by the litany of names I didn’t recognise, and the bitchy theatre politics. Is it possible that there’s something there, some grudge between Bruce and James? Or maybe – maybe quite the opposite.
It seems unlikely though. And even if he did send Clare off into the night, what would it achieve? He couldn’t have predicted what would happen.
Most importantly, though, he could not have known about my past with James. Unless … unless someone told him.
Clare could have told him. I can’t get away from that. But the thing is this: this murder has been set up in such a way that it didn’t just destroy James, it is destroying me and Clare too. It doesn’t just feel like collateral damage; there is something incredibly malicious and personal about the way I have been deliberately dragged in, reminding us both of long-forgotten sores. Who would do that? Why would anyone do that?
I try to look at this like one of my books. If I were writing this, I could imagine a reason for Tom to hurt James. And I could probably manufacture a motive for him to hurt Clare in the process. But me? Why go to all these lengths to bring in someone he doesn’t even know? The only person who could possibly want to do that would be someone who knows all three of us. Someone who was there at the time it all blew up. Someone like …
Nina.
But my mind shies away from that, flinching from the idea. Nina can be odd; sharp and sarcastic and often thoughtless. But there’s no way she’d do something like that. Surely? I think of her face, set in stern lines like grief, as she remembered the gunshot wounds she’d treated in Colombia. She lives to help people. Surely she’d never do this?
But something is whispering in my ear, a little voice, reminding me of how callous Nina can be. I remember her saying once, very drunk, ‘Surgeons don’t care about people, not in a touchy-feely way. They’re like mechanics: they just want to cut them up, see how they work, dismantle them. Your average surgeon’s like a little boy who takes apart his dad’s watch to see how it works and then can’t get it back together. The more skilled you get, the better you get at re-assembling the parts. But we always leave a scar.’
And I think, too, about her occasional shocking flashes of contempt for Clare. I think about her savagery that night when she talked about how Clare wanted to push and prod and get off on other people’s reactions, her bitterness about the way Clare outed her all those years ago. Is there something there, some reason she’s never forgiven Clare?
And finally, I think about her actions on the first night we arrived. The I Have Never game. I remember the deliberate malice of her drawling, I have never fucked James Cooper.
Suddenly, in the over-heated little sauna of a room, I feel cold. Because that is the kind of cruel, personal spite that lies behind this whole crazy situation. It wasn’t just curiosity about me and James. It wasn’t thoughtlessness. It was deliberate cruelty – to me and to Clare. Who is pushing and prodding and getting off on people’s reactions now?
But I push that thought away. I will not think about Nina like this. I will not. This will send me mad if I let it.
Flo. Flo is the name I keep coming back to. Flo was there from the beginning. Flo invited the guests. Flo held the gun. Flo was the one who claimed it was loaded with blanks.
Flo – with her strange obsession with Clare. With her unstable intensity. She could have found out about me and James at any point – she’s Clare’s best friend, after all, has been since university. What more likely than Clare confiding in her about James and me?
Is that why she’s taken an overdose? Has she realised what she’s done?
I am looking up, looking into space as I think all this out, and then suddenly my eyes focus on something, on a movement outside the door.
And I realise what it is.
The guard is back – the police guard at my door. Only this time I have absolutely zero doubt: they are not there to protect me. They are there to keep me in. I’m not going home when they discharge me, I’m going to a police station. I will be arrested, and questioned, and most likely charged if they think they can make this stick.
Coldly, dispassionately, I try to examine the last person at the hen night: the case against myself.
I was there. I could have sent those texts to James. I could have swapped the live round for the blanks. I had my hand on the gun when Flo fired. What could be more easy than nudging the barrel to ensure it was pointing at James as he came up the stairs?
And, more importantly, I was there at the second half of James’s murder. I was in the car when it drove off the road.
What the hell happened in that car? Why can’t I remember?
I think back to what Dr Miller said: Sometimes the brain suppresses events that we’re not quite ready to deal with. I suppose it’s a … coping mechanism, if you will.
What is it that my brain cannot cope with? Is it the truth?
I realise I’m shivering as if I’m cold, even though the heat of the hospital is as stifling as ever, and I pull Nina’s cardigan from the foot of the bed and huddle it round myself, breathing in her scent of fags and perfume, trying to steady myself.
It’s not the thought of being arrested and charged that has shocked me so much – I still don’t believe that will really happen. Surely, surely if I just explain everything they will believe me?
What has really knocked me off balance is this: someone hates me enough to do this. But who?
I don’t let myself think about the final possibility. It’s one too horrible for me to allow it into my mind, except in tiny niggling whispers when I’m thinking about other things.
But as I huddle down beneath the thin hospital blanket, Nina’s cardigan around my shoulders, one of those whispers comes: What if it’s true?
The rest of the day goes slowly, as if I’m moving through air made of treacle. It feels like the nightmares I sometimes have where my limbs are too heavy to move. Something is pursuing me, and I have to get away, but I’m stuck in mud, my legs are numb and slow, and all I can do is wade painfully through the dream, with the unspecified horror behind me getting closer and closer.
My l
ittle room feels more and more like a prison cell, with the narrow hatch of reinforced glass, and the guard outside the door.
If they release me, I know now what will happen. I will not be going home. I will be arrested, and taken to a police station, and then probably charged. The texts are enough evidence to hold me, along with the fact that I denied having sent them.
I remember, a long time ago, when I wrote my first book, speaking to a policeman about interviewing techniques. You listen, he said. You listen for the lie.
Lamarr and Roberts have found their lie: I told them I did not send those texts. And yet, there they are.
I try to eat, but the food is tasteless and I leave most of it on the tray. I try to do a crossword, but the words fall away from me, they are just typing on a page and my mind’s eye is being invaded by other pictures.
Me, in the dock at court, in a prison cell.
Flo, on life-support, somewhere in this very hospital.
Clare, flat on a bed, her eyes moving slowly beneath her closed lids.
James, in a pool of spreading blood.
Suddenly my nostrils are filled with the smell of it – the butcher’s shop smell of his blood on my hands and my pyjamas and leaching into the floor …
I throw off the covers and stand up. I walk to the bathroom to splash my face with water, trying to wash away the stench of blood and the invading memories. But the memories I want don’t come. Is it possible … is it possible I did send those texts, and I have just buried it along with whatever happened in the car?
Who can I trust, if I can’t even trust myself?
I put my face in my hands, and when I stand, I look at myself in the mirror, beneath the unforgiving fluorescent light. The bruises around my eyes are still there, but fading. I look jaundiced, hollow-eyed. There are dark patches in the hollows at the bridge of my nose, and beneath my lower lids, but I no longer look like a freak. If I had concealer I could cover the shadows up. But I don’t. I never thought to ask Nina for that.
I look thin, and old. My face is crumpled where I have been lying on the hard hospital sheets.
I think of the me I am inside. In my head I have been sixteen for nearly ten years. My hair is still long. I find myself going to sweep it back in moments of stress, and it’s not there.
In my head James is still alive. I cannot believe that he isn’t.
Would they let me see his body?
I shiver, rake my wet hand through my crumpled hair, and rub my palms on the grey jogging bottoms.
Then I turn and leave the bathroom.
As I come out of the ensuite it strikes me that something is different. I can’t work out what it is: my book is still there on the bed. My flip-flops are beneath. My water jug is half full on the locker and the file of notes is still stuck crookedly into the holder at the foot of the bed.
Then I see.
The guard is not there.
I walk to the door, peering out through the wire-hatched pane. The chair is there. A cup of tea is there, steaming gently. But no guard.
A little prickle of adrenaline runs through me, making the hairs on my neck shiver. My body knows what I am about to do, even before my mind has processed it. My fingers are reaching for the flip-flops, easing them on. My hands are buttoning Nina’s cardigan. Lastly I reach for the two ten-pound notes, still lying, folded, on the corner of the locker.
My heart is thumping as I press gently on the panel of the door, expecting at any moment to hear a shout of Stop! or just a nurse saying ‘Are you all right, dear?’
But no one says anything.
No one does anything.
I walk out of the room and down the corridor, past the other bays, with my feet in my flip-flops going plip, plip, plip against the linoleum floor.
Past the nursing station – there is no one there. A nurse is inside the little office but her back is to the glass, doing paperwork.
Plip, plip, plip. Through the double doors and out into the main corridor, where the air smells less of Lysol and more of industrial cooking from the kitchens down the corridor. I walk a little faster. There is a sign saying ‘Way Out’, pointing round a corner.
As I turn it, my heart almost stops. There is the police officer, standing just outside the men’s toilets, muttering into his radio. For a moment I falter. I nearly turn tail and run back to my room before he can discover I’m gone.
But I don’t. I recover myself and I walk on past, plip, plip, plip, with my heart going bang, bang, bang in time with my steps, and he doesn’t give me a second glance.
‘Roger,’ he says as I pass him. ‘Copy that.’
And then I round the corner and he’s gone.
I keep walking, not too fast, not too slow. Surely someone will stop me? Surely you can’t just walk out of a hospital like this?
There’s a sign saying ‘Exit’, pointing along the corridor between cubicles of beds. I’m almost there.
And then, as I’m almost at the last door before the lift lobby, I see something, someone, through the narrow pane of glass.
It’s Lamarr.
My breath catches in my throat and, almost without thinking, I duck backwards into a curtained cubicle, praying that the occupant is asleep.
I edge the curtains stealthily around myself, my heart banging in my throat, and stand, waiting, listening. There’s the noise of the main ward doors opening and closing, and then I hear her heels going click, clack, click, clack across the linoleum floor. At the nurses’ station, almost opposite the cubicle where I’m hiding, the steps pause, and I stand, hands trembling, waiting for the curtain to be ripped back, waiting for the discovery.
But then she says something polite to the matron on duty, and I hear the heels go click, clack, click, clack, down the corridor towards the toilets and my room.
Oh thank God, thank God, thank God.
My legs are weak and shaking with relief, and for a minute I don’t think I can stand. But I have to. I have to get out of here before she gets to my room and realises I’m gone. I suddenly wish I’d thought to put pillows in the bed or draw the little curtain across the window.
I take two or three deep breaths, trying to calm myself, and then I turn, ready to apologise to the occupant of the cubicle behind me.
But when I see who is in the bed, my heart almost stops.
It’s Clare.
Clare – lying with her eyes closed, her golden hair spread out across the pillow.
She is very pale, and her face is even more badly cut up than mine. There’s a monitor clipped on to her finger, and more wires leading under the blankets.
Oh my God. Oh, Clare.
I know it’s crazy but I can’t stop myself, my hand strays towards her face, and I brush a strand of hair away from her lips. Her eyes flicker beneath her lids, and I hold my breath, but then she relaxes back into whatever state she’s in – sleep? coma? – and I let out a gasping sigh.
‘Clare,’ I whisper, very soft, so that no one will hear, but perhaps it will filter through into her dreams. ‘Clare, it’s me, Nora. I swear, I’m going to find out the truth. I’m going to find out what happened. I promise.’
She says nothing. Her eyes shift under her lids, and I remember Flo at the seance, blindly searching for something none of us could see.
I think my heart might break.
But I can’t stop. They could be looking for me right now.
Carefully, stealthily, I peer out of the cubicle curtains. The corridor is empty – the nurses’ station is unmanned, they are all dealing with patients, and the matron has disappeared.
I slip out, closing Clare’s curtains behind me, and then I almost run for the doors at the end of the ward, and stumble out into the lift lobby.
I press the buttons, not once, but five, ten, fifteen times, pressing again and again, as if it will make the lifts come faster.
Then there’s a sudden grating noise and a ping, and the farthest lift doors open. I half-walk, half-run inside, my heart thudding. A porter is
in there pushing a woman in a wheelchair and hissing Lady Gaga through his teeth. Please, please let me make it.
The lift bumps to a halt and I stand back to let the porter and the woman out first, and then follow the signs to the main entrance. A bored-looking woman is sitting at the desk flicking through a copy of Hello.
As I draw level with her, her phone starts to ring, and I cannot stop myself walking a little faster. Don’t pick it up. Don’t pick it up.
She picks it up. ‘Hello, reception desk?’
I am walking too fast, I know I am, but I can’t stop myself. I must look like a patient. How can she not notice I’m wearing flip-flops, for Christ’s sake? Normal people, visitors, don’t wear flip-flops in November. Not with grey jogging bottoms and a blue knitted cardigan.
She is going to stop me, I know it. She’s going to say something, ask me if I’m OK. The two ten-pound notes clutched in my fist are damp with sweat.
‘Really?’ the receptionist says sharply as I draw level. She winds the phone cord around one finger. ‘Yes, yes all right. I’ll keep an eye out.’
My heart is in my mouth. She knows. I can’t bear it.
But she doesn’t look up. She’s nodding. Maybe it’s not me they’re talking about.
I’m almost at the door. There’s a sign telling people to use the alcohol rub on entry and exit. Should I stop? Will someone notice more if I stop, or more if I don’t?
I don’t stop.
At the desk the woman is still talking and shaking her head.
I am in the revolving door. For a moment I have a brief, flashing fantasy that it will stop mid-cycle, that I will be trapped in a triangle of air, with maybe just a sliver of a gap to the outside, enough to reach an arm out, but not escape.
But of course it doesn’t happen. The door continues its smooth revolution.
The cold air hits me like a blessing.
I am free.
I am out of the hospital.
I have escaped.