At three in the morning, hot, her head thick, but no longer dizzy, Beth went downstairs, poured a large glass of water and sat sipping it. Ollie came running over to her.
‘At least I’ve still got you, Ollie,’ she said, ‘but the others, what am I going to do? All that stuff last night was awful but the worst thing of all is all the stress about Sami. Was he having a having a fling, an affair? I don’t bloody well care what anyone calls it, but I need to know if he chose someone else over me, even if it was only once. I need to know if he slept with Kathleen.’
On the work surface in the kitchen she saw Sami’s phone charging. Picking it up, she saw one saved voicemail, dated the Tuesday night before Kathleen died, the night Sami looked after her in hospital. Beth looked around. She felt a pang of guilt, then thought, sod it, she would be one of those women who checked her husband’s phone. She held the phone to her ear, and listened to the message. It was Kathleen, her beautiful Irish voice. Beth blinked. She’d started to forget what Kathleen’s voice sounded like already but now it was as if she was in the room with her. She was giving Sami an address.
Beth replayed the message. The address was strange: not a hospital she’d ever heard of. In fact, it sounded more like a private address. Her instinct was to turn off the phone, pretend she knew nothing. But, of course, she couldn’t. Feeling very sober now, she turned on her laptop, started to type the address into Google and immediately a map highlighting the address came up.
She clicked on the red marker and the map zoomed in, with a picture of the building at that address on the right-hand side. Beth felt very sick: that wasn’t a hotel, or a house. Beth copied and pasted the name and Googled it, went to their website.
The place Beth was looking at was a private clinic which offered several gynaecological services, but primarily it was a clinic which offered abortions. This was the kind of clinic you booked to go to in advance. If Kathleen had been miscarrying, she would have been taken to the local NHS hospital, not to some private clinic. No, if she’d gone here, she’d have booked in and the only thing Beth could see that she would have gone for was for an abortion.
Beth’s hand started to shake. She checked the address: this was definitely the place.
She sat down, stunned. Kathleen had never seemed far from her Catholic roots. It would have been an incredibly difficult decision for her. Had Sami made her do it?
Beth didn’t dare move out of her chair in the kitchen. She had no idea how long she sat there, staring at the phone, until Sami came in.
‘I wondered where you were,’ he said, his eyes scanning her face all the time, looking for clues as to what was wrong.
Beth picked up his phone, her hand shaking, switched it to speakerphone and played him the voicemail. Kathleen’s presence filled the kitchen.
When it finished Beth tried to steady her voice. ‘I looked up the address. Kathleen wasn’t in a local hospital for a panic attack. She’d booked this clinic, and I know why.’
Sami held the back of the chair, manoeuvred himself round to sit down, put his head in his hands.
‘Kathleen had an abortion, didn’t she? It was planned, and she asked you to be with her.’ Beth was taking deep breaths. She was close to throwing up.
‘It’s a clinic for all kinds of gynae problems.’ Sami’s voice was shaking, weak.
‘Are you telling me Kathleen did not have an abortion?’
Sami took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. ‘Yes.’
‘Why was she there then? And don’t you dare say you can’t tell me.’
He reached over to touch her hand, but she pulled away. ‘Get off. Tell me what happened.’
He gnawed at his lip. Beth waited. ‘I am breaking my word, but I will tell you. You can’t tell anyone this.’
Sami looked at her questioningly, but her face stayed frozen.
He took a deep breath. ‘Kathleen rang me at King’s College, early Tuesday evening. She was crying, hysterical. She told me she was at a clinic and frightened of what was happening to her. She pleaded with me to go and, of course, I went there. When I got there she was in bed, and then she told me she had been pregnant.’
‘Had been?’
‘That day at the academy she had been unwell. She was bleeding very badly. She had been to this clinic before with Patrick and she rang them. The consultant she’d seen before agreed to admit her and operate.’
‘Why didn’t she go to a normal hospital?’
‘She knew the consultant there, trusted him. She knew she could trust them not to contact Patrick.’
‘Why was she so worried about Patrick knowing?’
Sami scratched his forehead, but she didn’t reach out to stop him. ‘The thing is, the baby couldn’t have been Patrick’s.’
Beth clutched her arms around her body; the room was swimming. Sami kept talking, but voices kept shouting at her not to listen, to make it all go away. If she didn’t hear it, it couldn’t be true. The cold touch of Sami’s hand, however, forced her to focus.
‘Listen to me, Beth. The chances of Patrick fathering children after the chemotherapy a few years ago were remote.’
‘Kathleen never told me anything about this—’
‘Patrick was ashamed. It was silly, but that was the way he felt. I was one of the few people who knew. He trusted me not to tell anyone, but he wouldn’t use our pharmacy or have a doctor at our practice. I did know that last year they went to the clinic that Kathleen was admitted to, talking to the consultant about fertility issues.’
‘Kathleen got pregnant, didn’t want an abortion, was she hoping Patrick would stick by her or was she planning to leave him?’ Beth looked at Sami through half shut eyes.
‘Kathleen was not planning to leave Patrick. She planned to tell him that it was a miracle, that they had beaten the impossible odds.’
‘She really thought he would believe that?’
‘There was a one in a hundred million chance or something. She thought he’d want it to be true so badly that he would believe her.’
‘But in fact, she had an affair – and you knew.’
Sami rubbed his lip with his finger.
Beth held her breath and then took the plunge. ‘Who was the father?’
She waited; there was no explosion. Instead in a calm, measured voice, Sami said, ‘I’m not sure. I assumed it was someone on her course, although she didn’t tell me. All she said was that she’d slept with someone once before Christmas, done a pregnancy test in January and found she was pregnant.’
‘Did she tell the father she was pregnant?’
‘I don’t know. She didn’t say much about him at all. Before she lost the baby, she had been planning to let Patrick believe it had been a miracle. And then, of course, that Tuesday she had the miscarriage. By the time I got to her at the hospital she was distraught. Despite all the problems she’d really wanted the baby. She was grieving and consumed by guilt at the same time.’
‘Poor Kathleen.’ Beth hesitated. ‘You say she was distraught? You told me she was emotional when she was talking to me, and yet you dismissed the idea that she could have taken her own life. Surely this makes that at least a possibility. I knew Kathleen; she’d have been heartbroken.’
Sami shook his head. ‘No. If I’d thought that was likely, I’d have felt obliged to talk to the police about it. No. She was upset but she admitted to me that it made the decisions she was making simpler. I think she felt a bit guilty because of that sense of relief. Remember, I worked with her on the Thursday and Friday. I checked up on her, but she told me that apart from feeling very tired and sore, she was OK. Of course, then we had the whole inspection thing. We were all on edge, but no one was suicidal. All Kathleen said to me was that she’d been confused but she could see a way forward now.’
‘By that I assume she meant that she was going to tell Patrick the truth.’
‘I urged her to. I felt it was important she did.’
‘You wanted her to tell Patrick everything – even who she’d slept with?’
‘Yes. Patrick would want to know. I was sure it was a one night fling with someone from her course, like I said. In fact, I wondered if that was why she was leaving her course. It was her way of breaking all ties. The relationship was not a threat to her marriage any more. I was sure, in time, Patrick would forgive her.’
‘What about the father of the baby? How was he feeling about it all?’
‘I have no idea. As I said, she didn’t tell me anything about him.’
Beth went over to the sink, poured herself another glass of water, sat back down, straight backed.
‘You must realise how all this has looked to me? You’ve no idea how confused and hurt I’ve felt, where my mind has been.’
He scratched his forehead. ‘You didn’t think there was anything between me and Kathleen, did you?’
Beth fiddled with her wedding ring. ‘I’ve been thinking that, yes. I’ve been thinking all sorts.’
‘Like what?’
The clock on the dresser ticked.
‘Like, would you threaten Kathleen to keep her quiet?’
‘Good God, Beth. Do you know me at all?’
‘I thought I did, but you’ve been lying to me and you left all these questions unanswered. I’ve had to answer them as best I could.’
‘I was simply trying to keep to a promise, to let Kathleen sort things out with Patrick, and then she died. I didn’t know how to tell you.’ He looked up. ‘I can’t believe you thought I was capable of treating anyone like that.’
‘My mind has been all over the place. Once the idea that you’d slept with Kathleen got into my head, that you might have fathered a child with her, everything went crazy.’
‘I don’t know what to say, but I promise you I never slept with Kathleen. I’ve never loved her in that way. You’re the person I love, have my children with, want to grow old with. I thought you knew that.’
‘If you’d been less secretive, told me what was going on, I’d have understood.’
‘I’m so sorry. Look: there are the texts I sent to Kathleen when we got back from London on Wednesday evening.’
Putting his glasses back on, he read them out. ‘“Tell Patrick. It’s the best way. He loves you. He will forgive you.” Kathleen didn’t answer me, but then we had the inspection and failed. That evening I wrote again, “Try not to worry about work. Concentrate on sorting things with Patrick.” Kathleen replied to that. “I’m sorry about the mistakes at work. I will try and talk to Patrick soon. There are other things, though, I have to sort out first.” I had no idea what these things were that Kathleen was talking about, but on Saturday evening she wrote to me, “Thank you for your help. You and Beth are such good friends. I am going to try and put things right soon.”’
Beth read them herself: it was all so sane and normal.
‘From the bottom of my heart, I can tell you, there was nothing between me and Kathleen,’ said Sami. ‘I love you. I never loved her. You do believe me, don’t you?’
Beth read the words. Her eyes blurred with tears. She sat back in her chair. She sipped water to sooth the burning in her throat. ‘I want to—’
Sami grabbed her hand. ‘If you’d let your mind go to me threatening Kathleen, did you let it go further? Please tell me you never thought I would have done anything to harm Kathleen.’
She stood. The sound of her breathing seemed to fill the kitchen. He was waiting. Would she speak the truth? She’d already accused him of infidelity, of fathering another woman’s child. How would he cope with her saying she’d considered him capable of murder?
‘No, of course not. I know you better than that.’
‘Thank God. I’m so sorry for what I’ve put you through. I’m sorry for making you so anxious. You look exhausted. Have I reassured you? Do you believe me?’
‘I will try. It’s been a terrible time. All the anxiety about Kathleen, and the secrets—’
‘I know. Listen, I can see now I’ve made it all a million times worse, but please try and let some of this stuff with Kathleen go.’
Beth shook her head. ‘If someone we know was threatening to ruin Kathleen over an affair, her pregnancy, I want to know. It’s a terrible thing to do, and when you think about it, they must have been desperate to cover up whatever they were doing. Actually, you don’t have any evidence that the affair was with someone on her course, do you?’
‘Well, no.’
‘So, it could have been someone here on the island—’
‘I’m sure it wasn’t.’
‘But you don’t know. Don’t you see, there is so much I need to know about Kathleen: who she had the affair with, who was threatening her, what they were covering up.’
‘But it probably has nothing to do with her death. You can’t make that link. It’s bad enough accusing friends of threats, but murder?’
‘Look, one step at a time. I owe it to Kathleen to find out who was threatening her. If I can, I’d like to know who she had the affair with; it might help.’
‘Beth, you are not a confrontational sort of person. You need friends, the security of being part of a group. You need it more than me. I saw it last night. You could lose all that and achieve nothing. Please, I can’t bear to see you as ill as you were six years ago. Please don’t go there again.’
She saw the pain in his eyes. ‘I’m not in that place, I promise you. You’re not to worry.’
‘But, as I’ve no idea what caused your breakdown last time, I’m bound to worry, aren’t I? All I know is you went off to your aunt’s funeral, came back, and everything fell apart. You wouldn’t talk to me. I didn’t know what was going on.’
Beth could hear the unspoken pain, resentment, confusion. It tore her apart, but still the fear held her back from telling Sami what had happened. It reminded her of when she was twelve, she had been with a friend to the Olympic pool in Cardiff. When the guard wasn’t looking, she’d gone to the top board, as a dare. Clinging onto the bar she walked right to the edge of the board. It had been like standing on top of a skyscraper looking down at a blue world. She could see the pinpoints of her friends, waving, egging her on. She was desperate to dive. She’d been for lessons, knew the techniques, but fear paralysed her, and it was all she could do to creep backwards and come back down the steps.
That memory never left her, and whenever she came close to telling Sami about her secret it was as if she was back there, stood on the edge, peering down and, each time, like today, she crawled away.
‘I don’t know what to say,’ said Sami. ‘I can’t stop you, can I? But please, be careful.’
Sami came round to her and pulled her to stand next to him, held her and kissed her hair. She stood there in his arms, relieved to feel close to him, but in her head, she was still there, standing on that board, shaking.