In a Dark, Dark Wood

by Ruth Ware

  I feel tears, wet on my face, but I scrub them away. There is no time for grief. The hours are ticking down until dawn, until they come and get me.

  What happened next?

  The living-room door is still off its hinges from when Tom took it down and we struggled with it out through the front door to where Clare was waiting in the car.

  The front door is not deadlocked, and I open it from the inside without difficulty. When I do, the force of the wind nearly bangs the steel door into my face, and the snow rushes inside like a living thing, trying to get in, trying to force what little warmth is left in the house back out.

  I screw up my eyes and, holding the throw hard around my shoulders, I step out into the white blizzard. I stand on the porch, where I stood that night waiting for Nina. I remember Tom calling out something to Clare, and Clare gunning the engine.

  And then I remember noticing that her coat was lying over the porch rail.

  I put out my hand, pretend to pick it up.

  I’m shivering, but I’m trying as hard as I can to remember back to that night, to the shape of something small and round in the pocket.

  I hold out my hand, my eyes watering with the hard pellets of driving snow.

  And suddenly I can remember. I can remember what I was holding in my hand.

  And I know why it set me running.

  It was a shell. A shotgun shell. It was the missing blank.

  Standing here, in my own footsteps, the thoughts shoot across my brain just as they did that night, and I can remember them: it’s like watching the snow melt, and the familiar landscape emerge from beneath.

  It could have been there from the clay-pigeon shoot earlier. But I know enough now, from our shoot, to tell the difference between a live round and a blank. Live shotgun rounds are solid in your hand, packed with pellets that make them feel heavier than their compact shape suggests. What I held that night was light as plastic with no shot at all. It was a blank. The blank. The blank that was supposed to have been in the shotgun.

  Clare had been the one to substitute the live round for the blank.

  And now she’d just driven off into the night with James dying in the back of the car.

  Why? Why?

  It made no sense then, and it still makes no sense to me now, but then I had no time to consider. I had only one option: to catch them up, and confront Clare.

  Now, I have time. I turn slowly and walk back into the house, and I shut and lock the door behind me. Then I go into the living room and sit, my head in my hands, trying to figure it out.

  I cannot leave here until dawn – unless, that is … I get up, stiff with cold, and pick up the phone.

  No, it’s still dead, the line simply hissing and crackling quietly. I am stuck then, stuck until daylight, unless I want to stagger back down that icy, rutted lane in the darkness once more, and I’m not sure I’d even make it.

  I go back to the sofa and huddle deeper into the throw, trying vainly to get some warmth back into my limbs. My God, I’m so tired – but I cannot sleep. I must figure this out.

  Clare substituted the live round.

  Therefore Clare killed James.

  But it makes no sense. Clare has no motive – and she is the only person who could not have faked those texts.

  I have to think.

  The question I keep coming back to is why; why would Clare kill James on the eve of their own wedding?

  And then suddenly, with a coldness that’s totally different to the chill in the air, I remember Matt’s words in the hospital. James and Clare were having problems.

  I shake it off almost immediately. This is ridiculous. Yes, Clare’s life has to be perfect; yes she has incredibly high standards, but for God’s sake, she’s been dumped before. She held a massive grudge, I know that, because I sat by while she signed Rick’s email up to every porn site and Viagra newsletter she could find. But she sure as hell didn’t kill the bloke.

  But there is one big difference.

  When Rick dumped Clare, Flo wasn’t in the picture.

  I think of Flo’s words, as she sobbed outside the bathroom on the first night: She’s my rock, and I’d do anything for her. Anything.

  Anything?

  I remember her reaction to me going to bed – the way she’d exploded, accusing me of sabotage. I’ll kill you if you ruin it, she’d promised. I hadn’t taken her seriously. But maybe I should have.

  And that was just a hen. What would she do to the man who was planning to leave her best friend at the altar?

  And who better to take the fall than the bad ex-friend who stole Clare’s rightful property and then walked away for ten long years.

  But now it has all spiralled out of control.

  And then I remember the matching clothes Flo was wearing on that last night – and suddenly I realise: what if it wasn’t Clare’s coat on the rail, but Flo’s, and Clare simply grabbed it by mistake?

  Flo. Flo was the one who picked up the gun.

  Flo was the one who told us it wasn’t loaded.

  Flo was the person who set this entire weekend up, persuaded me to come, arranged the whole thing.

  And Flo could have sent that text.

  I feel like a web is closing round me, like the more I fight the more I will be tangled in it.

  James is dead.

  Clare is dying.

  Flo is dying.

  And somewhere, Nina is in her B&B at breaking point, and she and Tom are facing questions they cannot answer, suspicions they cannot shake.

  Please let me wake from this.

  I curl up on the sofa on my side, and draw my knees into my chest, the throw tucked around myself. I have to think, I have to decide what to do, but in this confused, exhausted state I find myself going round in circles.

  I have a choice: wait here for the police, try to explain my presence, explain about the blank and Flo’s jacket and hope they believe me.

  Or I can leave at the crack of dawn, and hope they don’t realise I was here.

  But where do I go? To London? To Nina? How will I get away?

  The police will find me of course, but it will look better than finding me here.

  Almost against my will, I can feel my eyes closing, and my limbs, quivery with tiredness, slowly relaxing, the muscles twitching with exhaustion every few minutes as they loosen into sleep. I cannot think. I will try to work it out tomorrow.

  A great yawn comes up from somewhere deep inside, and I realise I have stopped shivering. I let the flip-flops fall off my feet, and realise a thin line of tears is tracing down my cheek from the yawn, but I am too tired to wipe them away.

  Oh God, I need to sleep.

  I will think about this … tomorrow …

  It’s night. It’s the night of the shooting. And I’m crouched in the blazing hallway, bathed in the golden, streaming light and in James’s blood.

  The blood is in my nostrils, on my hands, beneath my nails.

  He’s looking up at me, his eyes wide and dark, and shining wet.

  ‘The text …’ he says. His voice is hoarse. ‘Leo …’

  I reach out to touch his face – and then suddenly he’s gone, the blood is gone, and the light is gone.

  I wake, it’s dark, and my heart is racing in my chest.

  For a minute I just lie there, feeling my heart thumping like a drum, trying to work out what has woken me. I can’t hear anything.

  But then I turn my head and I notice two things.

  The first is that outside the plate-glass window to the front of the house, is a dark shape that wasn’t there before. And I’m pretty certain it’s a car.

  The second is that I can hear a sound from the kitchen. It is a slow, juddering, scraping noise.

  It’s the sound of a chair being pushed across the slate tiles as someone opens the door.

  32

  THERE IS SOMEONE in the house.

  I sit bolt upright, the throw falling from my shoulders, my heart thumping so high in my throat I fee
l sick.

  For a second I think about calling out, challenging the intruder. Then I realise I’m insane.

  Whoever is here, for whatever reason they’ve come, it’s not a good one. It’s not the police. They wouldn’t come like this in the dead of night, creeping in through the back door. No, there are only two possibilities: some random burglar has got lucky and discovered the open back door. Or the murderer is here.

  I would love for it to be a burglar. Which says something about how fucked-up my life has become – that a random stranger breaking in here in the middle of the night would be the best possible explanation. But I know in my heart of hearts it’s not. The murderer is here. For me.

  Very, very carefully, I get up, holding the throw around myself like a shield, as if the soft red wool can protect me.

  My one comfort is that the intruder won’t want to put the lights on any more than I do. Maybe in the dark I can evade them, hide, escape.

  Fuck. Where do I go?

  The windows in here open onto the garden, but I’m sure they’re locked – I tried them from the outside, and I remember Flo locking them that last night. She had a key. I have no idea where it is.

  I can hear them in the kitchen. They are walking softly across the tiles.

  Two very strong impulses fight within me. The first is to run – run out the door, up the stairs, lock myself in the bathroom – do whatever I can to get away.

  The second is to stand and fight.

  I am a runner. This is what I do – I run. But sometimes you can’t run any more.

  I stand, my fists clenched by my side, my blood a roaring in my ears, my breath a tearing in my throat. Flight or fight. Flight or fight. Flight or—

  Shoes crunch on the glass in the hallway. And then they stop.

  I know the murderer is there, listening – listening for me. I hold my breath.

  And then the living-room door swings wide.

  Someone is standing in the frame, and I cannot see who it is. In the dimness all I can see is a shape, black against the reflecting steel of the front door.

  It could be anyone – they’re huddled in a coat, and their face is hidden by the shadows. But then the figure moves, and I see the glint of blonde hair.

  ‘Hello Flo,’ I say, my throat so tight I can barely speak.

  And then she laughs.

  She laughs and laughs, and for a long moment I have no idea why.

  She moves, still smiling, into a strip of moonlight, her feet crunching on glass.

  And I understand.

  Because it’s not Flo.

  It’s Clare.

  She’s holding herself up against the wall, and I realise that she’s as frail as me. Maybe she wasn’t as ill as she pretended when I saw her in the hospital, but she’s ill all right. She holds herself like someone twice her age, like she’s been beaten bloody and has only half healed.

  ‘Why did you come back?’ she manages at last. ‘Why couldn’t you just leave it?’

  ‘Clare?’ I croak. It doesn’t make sense. Nothing makes sense.

  She feels her way slowly to the sofa and then sinks down with a groan. In the thin, cloud-muted moonlight she looks awful – worse than me. Her face is cut and there’s a huge swollen bruise on one side of her forehead, black in the pale light.

  ‘Clare – why?’

  I can’t make sense of this.

  She says nothing. Nina’s rolling tobacco is on the table, along with Rizlas, and she reaches for them, painfully, with a little gasp of relief as she sinks back into the cushions, and begins slowly, painstakingly, to roll up. She is wearing gloves, but in spite of that her hands are shaking, and she spills the tobacco twice before she lights up.

  ‘I haven’t smoked in years.’ She puts the end to her lips and takes a long drag. ‘God, I’ve missed it.’

  ‘Why?’ I say again. ‘Why are you here?’

  I still can’t make my brain accept what’s happening. Clare is here – therefore she must be the killer. But why, how? There was no way she could have sent that first text – she was the one person in the house who could not have done it.

  I should be running. I should be cowering behind the sofa, armed with a bread knife. But I can’t make myself understand this. It’s Clare, my brain keeps insisting. She’s your friend. When she holds out the cigarette to me, I take it, half in a dream, and suck in the smoke, holding it deep until the trembling in my limbs stills and I feel my head get light.

  I go to hand it back, and Clare shrugs.

  ‘Keep it. I can roll another. God it’s cold. Want a tea?’

  ‘Thanks,’ I say, still in this strange, dreamlike state. Clare is the killer. But she can’t be. I can’t seem to think what to do – and so I take refuge in these strange, automatic social responses.

  She gets painfully to her feet and hobbles out into the kitchen, and in a few minutes I hear the click of the kettle and the bubbling hum as it begins to boil.

  What should I do?

  The roll-up has burnt out, and I set it gently onto the coffee table. There’s no ash tray, but I no longer care.

  I shut my eyes, rub my hands over my face, and as I do I get a flash, like a projection against the inside of my lids: James, the blood bright as paint under the lights.

  The smell from my dream is still sharp in my nostrils, his hoarse voice is inside my head.

  There’s a small sound from the doorway and I see Clare shuffling painfully across with two mugs in her hand. She sets them down and I take one, and she lowers herself to the sofa and pulls a packet of pills from her pocket, and breaks two capsules into the tea, her fingers a little clumsy in their woollen gloves.

  ‘Painkillers?’ I ask, more for something to say. She nods.

  ‘Yes. You’re supposed to swallow the capsules whole, but I can’t swallow pills.’ She takes a swig and shudders. ‘Oh God, that’s disgusting. I’m not sure if it’s the pills or if the milk’s gone off.’

  I take a gulp of my own. It tastes vile – tea always tastes vile, but this is even more vile than normal. It tastes sour and bitter below the sugar Clare has added – but at least it’s hot.

  We sip in silence for while, and then I can’t keep quiet any longer.

  ‘What are you doing here, Clare? How did you get here?’

  ‘I drove Flo’s car. She lent it to my folks, and they left the keys in my locker for Flo to collect. Only … she never did.’

  No. She never did. Because …

  Clare looks up. Her eyes over the top of her cup are dilated in the dimness, and they shine. She is so beautiful – even like this, huddled in an old coat, with her face cut and bruised and no make-up on.

  ‘As for what I’m doing here, I could ask the same about you. What are you doing here?’

  ‘I came back to try to remember,’ I say.

  ‘And did you?’ her voice is light, as though we’re talking about what happened in an old episode of Friends.

  ‘Yes.’ I meet her eyes in the darkness. The mug is hot between my numb hands. ‘I remembered about the shell.’

  ‘What shell?’ Her face is blank, but there is something in her eyes …

  ‘The shell in your jacket. I found it, in the pocket of your coat.’

  She is shaking her head, and suddenly I find I am angry, very, very angry.

  ‘Don’t fuck with me, Clare! It was your coat. I know it was. Why would you come back here if not?’

  ‘Maybe …’ she looks down at the mug and then up at me. ‘Maybe, to protect you from yourself?’

  ‘What the hell does that mean?’

  ‘You don’t remember what happened, do you?’

  ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘The nurses. They talk. Especially when you’re asleep – or might be.’

  ‘So? So what?’

  ‘You don’t remember what happened in the forest, do you? In the car?’

  ‘What the hell are you on about?’

  ‘You grabbed the wheel,’ she says softly. ‘You
told me you couldn’t live without James, that you’d been fucked-up over him for ten years. You told me that you dreamed about him – that you’d never got over what happened, what he said to you in that text. You drove us off the road, Lee.’

  It washes over me like a wave. I feel my cheeks tingle with the shock, as if she’s slapped me – and then it recedes, and I’m left gasping.

  Because it’s the truth. As she says it, I get a sharp, agonising flash – hands on the wheel, Clare fighting me like a demon, my nails in her skin.

  ‘Are you sure you’re remembering this right?’ she says, her voice very gentle. ‘I saw you, Lee. You had your hand on the barrel of the gun. You nudged it towards James.’

  For a minute I can’t say anything. I’m sitting here, gasping, my hands gripping the tea cup like it’s a weapon. Then I am shaking my head.

  ‘No. No, no, no! Why are you here, in that case? Why aren’t you denouncing me to the police?’

  ‘How do you know,’ she says quietly, ‘that I haven’t already done that?’

  Oh my God. I feel weak with horror. I take a long gulp of tea, my teeth chattering at the edge of the mug, and I try to think, try to gather the strands of all this together.

  This is not true. Clare is screwing with my head. No sane person would be sitting here drinking tea with a woman who murdered her fiancé and tried to drive their car off the road.

  ‘The shell,’ I say doggedly. ‘The shell was in your coat.’

  ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about,’ she says, and there’s a catch in her voice. ‘Please, Lee, I love you. I’m scared for you. Whatever you’ve done—’

  I can’t think. My head hurts. I feel so strange, and there’s a vile taste in my mouth. I take another gulp of tea to try to swill it away, but the taste only intensifies.

  I shut my eyes and the picture of James swims in front of my closed lids, dying in my arms. Is this the picture that I’m going to see when I close my eyes for the rest of my life?

  ‘Text …’ he gasps, ‘text, Leo,’ and there is blood in his lungs.

  And then suddenly, amid the swimming haze of memories and tangled suspicion – something catches.

  I know what James was saying. What he was trying to say.

  I put down the mug.