Of course! You can’t simply publish anything online these days. There are checks and balances, hoops to jump through. Before publishing, the website automatically sent through a text message to confirm Nicole’s identity, a test that Freya and Jay could never have passed because it would have been sent directly to her cellphone. It also means that on the night, Nicole would have known that somebody was trying to pose as her online.
Freya had been torturing herself for no reason, because no advert was ever published in Nicole’s name. The only person who could have known what they were trying to do enough to mimic it would have had to have been someone on the inside.
Chapter 79
Freya
Twenty-seven days after the murder
The riot of red flowers on Freya’s doorstep is as shocking as a splatter of fresh blood. Her throat closes. She approaches them tentatively. If they are from the man who has been circling her, he may be nearby.
Her hands feel for the pepper spray she now carries in her purse. As she picks the flowers up and smells them, silence. No fingers suddenly clasping around her neck. No heavy breathing. She is alone.
The flowers have been wrapped in delicate layers of tissue paper and tied with a satin bow. There must be three dozen in here. The effect is elegant. When she opens it, she realizes the card has been bought from the California Museum of Sciences with an illustration of the cosmos on the front. Jay.
She pauses for a second and closes her eyes, letting the warm sunlight caress her face. These small moments in nature are the only thing able to calm her. She is no closer to feeling safe, even though Detective Cohen is doing his best to track her stalker. Work is not going well either. Over the past week, Ruth’s patience with her has begun to wear thin. Between comments such as ‘You look so tired’, and ‘Are you sure everything is OK?’ she’s beginning to wonder if Ruth can instinctively sense the secret brewing within her. She’s coming up to six weeks – no risk of showing, but she fears that everything that matters shows in her face.
A voice behind her that she recognizes instantly.
‘You can’t keep running from me forever, Freya.’
She’s heard that line before. Then she sees him, head bowed, but a familiar face. Adrenaline pulses through her veins.
‘Jay . . .’
‘Glad to see your habits haven’t changed. A run around the park, a smoothie at Jenny’s Health Foods and then a shower at home,’ he says, glossing over the situation with his trademark cockiness.
Those soulful eyes that once captivated Freya now appear jaded. His casual demeanor now seems subversive.
‘You should go.’ She puts the pepper spray away, turns and starts unlocking the door. This morning’s run was a bit too far, and her legs are starting to shake.
He steps in front of her. ‘Please, just join me for breakfast. Please? You could hear my side of the story at least?’
It’s the words at least that tug at her. She could listen to him. She is carrying his child after all. Her statement alerted him to the police in the first place. There is also a part of her that, after everything that has happened, wants to see him beg. Maybe then she’ll stop crying at night, maybe then she’ll stop missing him. Stronger than her pride is the need to know that he is hurting as much as she is.
‘Fine, but I’m only staying for a juice.’ It’s the only physical sign she is pregnant so far, this insatiable craving for orange juice. She wonders if her mother craved the same thing, if in an alternative universe she would watch Freya drinking glass after glass and know her secret without her saying a word.
They walk to the café and sit awkwardly opposite one another. Jay is the first to break the silence.
‘Freya – you’ve got to believe me when I say this is all a terrible misunderstanding.’
‘I’m battling to see how physical evidence of you having sex with Nicole could be a misunderstanding,’ she says, feeling a bit proud at her comeback. She wants to fast forward to the moment she tells Hattie, Kate and Jasmin how this all played out. She might redeem herself in Kate’s eyes. This would be a welcome development as they are still, technically, not speaking.
‘Tell me what really happened that night.’
‘You really want to know?’
‘Every sordid detail.’
He plays with the sachets of sugar in front of him, arranging them in a straight line. ‘Nicole hadn’t been well for a while. Psychologically, there were some challenges. You of all people know how imbalanced she was . . .’
It feels like another lifetime – the pointed stares, the whispered insults, the feeling of always being on edge. There was a sense of menace to Nicole’s every move that made it difficult for Freya to breathe. It was more than office bitchiness, it pressed on a hurt deep within her. Sometimes she still wakes up in the middle of the night, composing a comeback to an argument with Nicole, finding the right words to express to her the breadth of her pain.
‘That makes what you did even more disgusting.’ The word sticks in her throat. ‘You knew how she hurt me.’
His eyes soften. ‘I do. And it killed me. But in a way, Nicole was suffering more. She spent some time in an institution to try and treat her borderline personality and bipolar disorder, but even that didn’t help.’ The waitress brings their drinks, and he waits until she is out of earshot. ‘She was threatening to kill herself,’ he whispers. ‘Every day she would send me messages saying that, without me, she may as well die.’ It doesn’t fit. Strong, powerful Nicole on her knees for a man? But Freya cannot make assumptions. She knows what love can do.
‘So that night was a sympathy fuck?’ She doesn’t like the acid that sears her voice, and the place of need that it bubbles from. Dammit, he mattered to her. He mattered so much! And now he’s gone and ruined it all.
He looks to the floor. ‘There was a lot going on that night. You were blazing bright like a sun and it got to her, Freya. Hell, it got to me. She was begging me to fuck her and there was this crazy, stupid, drunk part of me that wanted to.’
It’s a cold fact that rests between them, ugly and unwanted. It was so ugly, she had no doubt it was true. Freya tries to stay strong and stop her voice from shaking. ‘You needed to feel like a man again . . .’
‘I’m not proud of it. Do you know how sexy you were that night? You were completely in your power, doing shit that men double your age could never understand. You are an electric current, Freya, and I get to go home with you and know you in ways nobody else will.’ His eyes tug at her, pull her in deeper.
‘Please, look at me. I was filled with this disgusting sense of self-sabotage that night. I think deep down, I didn’t believe I deserved you. So I did the only thing I knew how. I consciously destroyed it.’
She pushes away the compliment. ‘How did it feel, to fuck her?’ This language isn’t Freya, it’s too hard. But the shock of the past few weeks has turned her to steel.
Jay takes her hand in his. Her heart starts beating loudly in her ears. She doesn’t take it away. ‘It felt lonely and sad. I kept picturing you.’
‘And then you had the gall to come home to me . . .’
‘The guilt hit me as soon as we finished. I thought that if I just lay in your arms long enough, my stupid mistake would be erased.’
His fingers lightly stroke the inside of her wrist. It hurts, and she knows it’s wrong, but Freya can feel the fist of her rage unclenching. ‘Did you do anything to Nicole?’ she says. ‘Anything . . . violent?’
‘Of course not! You can’t really think I killed her. I was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. I deserve for you to hate me for what I did, but I didn’t hurt Nicole.’
His hand moves to her cheek. It feels good, better than Freya expected. It wouldn’t hurt to be lost in his love again, and it wouldn’t hurt to feel safe.
She draws closer to him, feeling that familiar smooth skin, melting into the irresistibility of him. Her mouth opens and she lets in all of it, the chao
s, the anger, the betrayal, the fear, the love. This crazy, cursed love. It’s dangerous, vile, and will be her undoing. Nobody will understand. Not her friends, not Julian, not Ruth, not Isla. But she can help it no more than a plastic bag caught and dragged into the undertow of the sea.
Chapter 80
Isla
Twenty-eight days after the murder
‘Morning, Kenneth.’
‘Good morning, Isla. Glad to see you at work so early.’
‘I am your ever-dedicated servant, my lord.’ He gives her a sideways glance. She pushed it a bit too far, then. He carries on shuffling aimlessly around his desk and Isla smiles, continuing her mindless transcription of press releases. It doesn’t feel so sickening faking friendliness these days, now that she knows she is on to something explosive.
A crazed stalker on the brink of arrest, a sex scandal, a potential murder suspect, justice all round. As soon as she finds enough sources to come forward, she is taking the sexual assault allegations straight to Simon. She can’t wait to see his face! For now, she lives breathlessly for the day that all the pieces come together, and she rises up victorious. Kenneth’s slimy brand of mediocrity that he calls journalism won’t go unchallenged for long.
Kenneth’s meeting with Julian was no coincidence. They are involved somehow, and they are covering something up. The picture she snapped of them together is an answer, all she has to do is confirm what the question is.
Her only door to that night is Freya, yet now she knows that the email she and Jay wrote together was never sent. No psychopath was called to Nicole’s home as a result of it. Isla wants to tell Freya, and hear the relief in her voice. She also wants to revisit the incident that sparked her suspicions in the first place. She was not imagining things that morning. Now that she has met Freya a few times, held her eyes in conversation and observed the contours of her face, she is certain that she is the same woman she almost ran over the morning after Nicole was murdered. If that is truly the case, then what spooked Freya so much, that she felt the need to lie?
Yet all calls to her new number have gone unanswered. Messages are delivered, but not read.
Simon mentioned that there was an officer regularly patrolling the area around Freya’s apartment, but what if the attacker slipped in while he was grabbing a coffee or in the restroom? Freya could be in danger and Simon would be none the wiser. What if he finally hurts her this time?
Isla has been distracted the past few days, with stories and the latest information in her investigation. How long has it been since she and Freya spoke? Three days? Four? Maybe even five?
She feels Kenneth’s eyes on her and begins to type furiously. She must have been more lost in thought than she realized. Freya has to know about Isla’s latest findings, whether she answers her phone or not. She opens up an email and types out a quick few paragraphs, listing everything she knows and how she found out. She attaches the police file, wincing briefly and the label ‘classified evidence’ and all it entails. Presses send. There, at least she has done something today. Hopefully Freya will call her when she gets the message.
She taps her pen on the desk in front of her. Isla can’t explain why it feels like everything is riding on this, or why she needs to speak to Freya. Nothing feels more urgent, but all she can do is wait.
Chapter 81
Isla
One month after the murder
The home décor store is brightly foreboding. The potential of every item makes Isla feel panicked. How can she, with her limited budget, buy one piece that will both give her lounge an uplift and be easy to assemble? She thought this would be a good way to spend her Saturday morning, the kind of homely thing a real grown-up would do, but it’s only made her more depressed. She is a thirty-one-year-old stifled journalist who can’t let go of a dead-end story and spends her days sitting opposite her boss’s desk. Lizzie and Mom are her closest confidantes, but they live thousands of miles away. On weekends she wafts through the city, alone.
Sometimes she wishes she had a partner to look at mundane things like desks with, or someone to share the thoughts racing through her mind. Her mind strays to the concert she saw with Simon. No, that was nothing, just two friends on the same case blowing off steam. He is probably running laps around the park with someone as fit and balanced as he is.
She has always considered herself independent, with no need for distractions like love, but her beliefs don’t seem to fit her like they used to.
She walks out with nothing, as usual. Another fruitless shopping trip where she was blinded by the choice on offer. She checks her phone, smiling at a silly meme of an alpaca in a police cap from Simon and a picture from Lizzie of the dress she’s wearing to a wedding that weekend. She is introducing her Lionel Richie fan to friends and family there – it’s getting serious! No messages from Freya yet. It’s only 10 a.m. The day still stretches before her, tedious and empty.
Then, she sees them. His hand rests over her shoulders protectively. She looks smaller, diminished in his presence. There is a sort of love between them, but it is fragile and tentative. He kisses her with gusto and, while she returns the affection, Isla is sure she sees her pull away just a moment too soon. They could be any couple out on a fraught suburban shopping trip, trying to be happy, but they are not. Because it is Jay, playing at being a couple with another woman, and that woman is Freya.
A familiar sadness washes over her, like hearing the strains of a long-forgotten song. So that is why Freya hasn’t been returning her calls or messages. She has forgiven him, after his despicable betrayal. Seeing them together is chilling.
She knows what it’s like to desperately pretend everything is normal, in the hope that one day it will be. She understands the need to cling on to stability, no matter how fragile it might be.
Isla was exactly the same, once. Despite her shame, despite her reporting the rape, she dropped the case at first. She pushed away her flashbacks, convinced herself that she was hysterical, drunk or both. She swallowed the pain and let it fester. More painful than the crime itself, was the effort of trying to pretend it didn’t happen. Her betrayal of herself was the worst betrayal of all.
Anyway, she was too fearful to test the truth – until Simon convinced her otherwise a year later.
She wishes she could go back and be stronger, and that it didn’t take an outsider’s intervention to make her finally go to court. She wishes she had hit back at the senseless, ill-informed early news coverage that accused her of crying wolf, and fought back. In many ways, she’s spent her life fighting back ever since.
Freya and Jay walk on, and Isla lets them. Because she knows what it’s like to love someone who consumes you, who scrambles your moral compass until you forget what is right or wrong. If you survive it, your entire world is shattered. It is impossible to trust in the magic of love the way you did before. It’s no wonder she spends every Sunday by herself, and her evenings on the couch watching reality TV. The debris of hurt stays put for decades.
Isla starts typing a message to Freya, then saves it in her drafts folder. She will wait until the next morning when the emotion has dried from her words. Now Freya is not only being circled by a stranger, but a boyfriend with a history of assault and aggression as well. This case has become more than solving the mystery of Nicole’s murder, it’s now become about saving Freya too.
Chapter 82
Freya
Six weeks after the murder
The baby is nine weeks old today, according to her app. ‘Congratulations,’ it says gleefully. ‘Your baby is now the size of a cherry.’ She doesn’t know why she has the app, it makes her look at her phone more than she should. But Freya still likes to keep track, just in case.
Ruth and Julian know. She’s sure of it. An awareness beats beneath her skin. Just this morning, she noticed how they shared a look when she had to use the bathroom during her presentation. Pregnancy is full of little physical indignities that render you slightly less human, or rather, too h
uman to function in normal places, like a workplace. Her constant low-level nausea makes it difficult to walk past the kitchen, or stomach the incense wafting out of Julian’s office. She is forever sneezing, and searching through her handbag for Kleenex. Such physicality interrupts her workday, and theirs. She can see it in their eyes – the way they have started to believe in what she has to say a little bit less.
Jay, on the other hand, is none the wiser. They are at his house. In the week since they got back together, he has overcompensated in his efforts to show that she is welcome. There is a place at the sink for her toothbrush and beauty products, and a drawer in the bedroom for her clothes. She dreamed about this the first time they dated, but now it seems premature, and too much.
She doesn’t like how his fingers lightly hold the back of her neck when they walk together.
He is in the kitchen making dinner, while she sits in the coolness of his open-plan living room.
‘What are you so absorbed in?’ he asks.
‘Nothing of interest. Just scrolling through Instagram, the usual.’ She tucks her phone into the pocket of her dress.
The salty, slightly burnt tang of the chorizo sizzling in the pan makes her mouth water. Her pulse slows, she tucks her phone away and tries to forget. No need to go making any proclamations just yet. This may be an imperfect reunion, but the presence of Jay in her life makes her feel at home for the first time. He brings over two steaming bowls of pea and chorizo risotto.
‘Wine?’
‘No thanks, I want to savor this masterpiece.’
He looks deep into her eyes. ‘Come on, relax a little. A glass won’t kill you. Where’s my party girl gone?’
Freya changes the subject. ‘How come you eat pork anyway, isn’t it against your religion or something?’
‘I’m Sikh, not Muslim,’ he sighs, ‘and besides, I’m not practicing. My religion is code. And bacon.’
Jay flicks through his Apple TV and selects a series she has been looking forward to for months.
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