I shouldn’t have had the wine at the pub. It was too cold, leaving a gnawing chill in my bones. At the breakfast bar, I’m shivering as I force myself to eat, even though the heating’s on and I’m wearing a warm cardigan.
The taxi driver told me to take care and stay safe as he dropped me outside and I nearly asked him to just keep on driving. Michael told me to leave, as though things like that are possible in this complicated day and age. But I did think about it on the way home—whether I could pack a bag and disappear for a few weeks.
Where would I go? And who’s to say I’d be safer there? People like Ellis don’t give up just because of a change of address. She would find me if she wanted to.
On the counter beside me, my phone beeps, flashing a message from Jam.
Did you get home okay? What did Michael say?
Before replying, I go to the fridge, wondering about more wine, coming up with reasons for and against, when something outside catches the corner of my eye and I gasp.
It’s me. My own reflection.
That settles it. I pour a large glass of wine and am replacing the bottle, when the security light flicks on outside and I see Alice.
What on earth…? Is she okay? I shove the bottle back into the fridge, hurrying to the patio doors.
It’s not Alice. I almost smack straight into the glass, pulling up abruptly, my chest squeezing the breath from me.
She’s standing near the summerhouse, hair fixed up, out of sight; a ghost, a vision all in gray.
The security light flicks off, startling me, and then she’s gone. I gulp for air, sagging in relief, until I realize that she can see everything I’m doing in here. Grappling for the lights, I turn them off. My eyes adjust to the dark and now I can see her again.
It’s just me and her, face-to-face, some thirty steps between us. Somehow, I always knew it would be like this—that it was about me, not Fred.
I reach for my phone, gripping it, trying to think whom to contact. Raising my hand, I make it obvious to her that I’m about to make a call. She moves then, approaching steadily, nothing in her hands that I can see, yet the hoodie around her waist is bulky—could be concealing something.
These doors are triple-glazed. She can’t get in. She’d have to smash her way in with a sledgehammer.
I’m still holding my phone in the air. “Don’t do that,” she shouts, her voice muffled. Stopping in front of the glass, she taps it. “Put your phone down.” Like it’s a gun.
I wish it were. I see now that a personal alarm and spray wouldn’t have helped. They’re not even within reach—are in my bag, out in the hallway. Even so, I don’t think spray would stop her.
“We need to talk.” She motions for me to unlock the door.
I’m not going to do that. I shake my head, heart pounding.
The security light is on again, flooding her features and I notice her hair isn’t up: it’s completely gone. She’s rubbing her neck as though it’s itching and then her arms are back by her sides, military-like.
There’s no way I’m opening those doors.
“Please…” she says, frowning.
There’s an earnestness about her that I haven’t seen before, but it may be the hair—the way her features are laid bare, childlike. “What do you want?” I shout.
The earnest look again, hands raised in appeal. “To talk.”
“No.”
She waits, as though I might change my mind, and then reaches into her trouser pocket.
This is it. She’s going to pull a gun, blow a hole in me, right through the glass. I’m feeling faint, dark spots appearing in my vision, when she holds something up, pressing it against the glass.
I inch forward to look at it, unable to believe what I’m seeing.
It’s a photograph, of me. And Dad… It’s Dad. And Frizzy. “Why do you have that? What are you doing with it?” The spots thicken in my eyes, my thoughts clotting.
“Let me in and I’ll explain.”
Her eyes widen and I see Alice in her again, but everything is muddled, and in my panic, I’m reaching for someone I love.
“I’m not going to hurt you, Gabby. I promise.”
Indecision floods me. If I don’t let her in, I’ll always be in the dark. But if I do…she could kill me.
She’s never going to go away. She’ll stand outside here forever, following me, haunting me.
I go to the knife block, removing the largest one, the one I rarely use, blade glinting. Then I return to the doors. “I swear, I’ll use it if I have to.”
She nods.
I swallow dryly, my hand trembling as I reach to unlock the door. It gives a horrible click and I immediately retreat behind the breakfast bar, holding the knife upright, my phone in my pocket.
“Thank you,” she says, looking about the kitchen. “Well, this is nice… I can see why you love it so much.” She unties her sweater, folds it, setting it near the door in a neat pile. She does the same with her shoes. She doesn’t appear to have anything else on her, aside from the photo, which she sets on the counter between us.
The color is faded and there’s a border around it as though it’s been in a frame for years. I can’t imagine who would have wanted to frame it. No one looks happy, aside from Dad. It was April 1990; the last time I ever saw him.
“Why do you have that?” The knife feels slippery in my hand. I tighten my grip on it.
“Because I knew you wouldn’t believe me without proof.”
“Of what?”
She smiles mysteriously, adjusting her top. I eye her abdomen, taut and golden like shiny leather. She’s wearing a crop top, the sort dancers wear, and baggy tracksuit bottoms, the perfect outfit for freedom of movement.
“What happened to your hair?” I ask.
She rubs her neck again. “Like it?”
“Why the sudden change?”
“This is how I usually wear it.” She smooths the marble work surface with her hand. “This is lovely. You have great taste.”
My wine is between us on the breakfast bar, untouched. She points to it. “May I?”
I don’t reply.
She takes a sip, flaps her face as though warm. “Phew! I’m boiling!” She’s shivering though, her lips lined with lilac.
“If you don’t tell me why you’re here, I’m phoning the police.”
“But you let me in,” she says politely.
“Because you said you’d tell me who you are.”
She sets the glass down carefully on a coaster, the most polite houseguest I’ve ever had. “I don’t think I actually said that did I?”
“Stop playing games! And tell me your real name.” My gaze drops to the B pendant above her cleavage; she’s changed it yet again.
She glances down at it too. “Well, if you must know…I’m Be.”
I frown. “Bea?”
“Without the A. I thought it was cool, but someday I might add the A. I’ll see how it goes.” She touches an apple in the bowl, lifts it to her nose, smells it. “Apples remind me of my old home. We had apple trees out back.” She says this as though it should mean something to me.
When it doesn’t, she replaces the fruit and the earnest look returns. She holds her hand against her bare chest. “I’m Elizabeth.”
This doesn’t mean anything either. I loosen my grip on the knife for a second, my hand aching, before tightening it again. In my pocket, my phone beeps. It’ll be Jam; I didn’t answer her earlier.
“Do you need to get that?” she asks.
“Just tell me who you are.”
She seems disappointed, bites her lip. “You really don’t know?”
“Well, you’re obviously not Ellis.”
“It’s kind of like Elizabeth though, isn’t it?” She cocks her head at me appraisingly, the way she did when we first met. “I mean, all the clues were there for you to find.”
“Clues? This isn’t a treasure hunt. I’m not playing games with you.”
“No one was playing games,” she says, standing up straight, posture perfect. I wish Alice would stand like that.
The thought of her makes me panicky. I’m a mom. Could I kill this woman, if I had to?
“There’s no need to be scared of me,” she says, reading my expression. “I’m not going to harm you.”
“But those messages… Ticktock? Not long now?… Why were you threatening me?”
She looks surprised. “They weren’t threats. Well, not aimed at you, anyway. Why would you even think that?”
I gaze at her in confusion, too many things vying for my attention.
“In fact…” She pushes down on the work surface, giving herself a little lift up, biceps bulging. “…All of this was for you.” Her feet drop lightly to the floor, noiselessly, like a cat.
“What do you mean? All what?”
She gestures around the room. “This place. I know how much it means to you. Which is why I’m helping you keep it.”
“I don’t understand…” The knife slips, falters, my arm aching with the effort of holding it up. Bolstering my grip, I use both hands. “Why would you care?”
Her face changes, becoming intense, the way she was at Rumors. I’ve thought of that look so many times. But now it seems fiercer, fear prickling my skin.
“I know all about his affairs, Gabby. And I feel your pain and humiliation. So I’m improving your chances of keeping what’s rightfully yours.” She holds her hands out, palms upward. “The house.”
She picks up the same apple, smelling it. “Everyone’s seen us around town, I made sure of that: Fred, with some young ho… And using his kids’ investments to pay?” She smiles. “He came up with that one all by himself, tying the noose around his own neck. I mean, it’s up to the court, but there’s a good chance they’ll deem him financially negligent and at least allow you to stay here until you want to sell.” Her smile widens. “I took legal advice, see.”
I gaze at the blade before me, the overhead lighting bouncing off it, flashing in my eyes.
“You want to know the best part?” She leans across the breakfast bar toward me.
I look at her numbly.
“We didn’t even sleep together. But then, who’s gonna believe that, hey?” She sets the fruit down, folds her arms. “You can thank me when you’re ready.”
I don’t know what to say, but it’s not thank you.
“Why would you do this?” Setting the knife down, I feel dazed, defenseless, my feet ice blocks.
She has me now, and probably knows it.
She reaches her tanned arm forward, sliding the picture toward me until it’s right under my nose, the grainy colors dancing. “Because of this.”
I look at it: me, Dad, Frizzy. “But you’re not…”
“There? Look again, Gabby.”
Picking up the photo, I examine it, holding it to the light. I can’t see details without my glasses, but am not going to admit that to her. I can see enough.
Frizzy, frail by then; Dad, faking a smile; me, several steps apart. And behind me…a tiny face in the background, wrinkled like a sprout.
There’s a silence so deep, so thick, I feel entombed by it.
I lower the picture, stare at her. “You’re Libby?”
She stares back at me—the first time I’ve seen fear on her. “Short for Elizabeth.”
“How…? I—”
“Dad called me Libby, but I hated it.” She shrugs, her voice breaking a fraction. “I always knew he only called me that because it sounded like Gabby.” She smiles, her mouth wobbling. “It was obvious he loved you more than me. It was like he ran out of energy, couldn’t be arsed the second time around.”
I’m still holding the photo, my clammy fingerprints all over it. I set it down, wiping my hands on my trousers. “Sara…was your mom?”
“Is my mom. She’s still alive,” she says, as though that’s remarkable. I don’t realize why right away.
She reaches for the wine, regaining her poise, arching her back. “I didn’t even know you existed until I was twenty-four.”
“How old are you now?”
“Thirty-four.”
She seems younger, and older, than that.
“And that was only because I found the photo. Mom said it was the last time they saw you—that she felt bad about it. But obviously not that bad because no one contacted you, right?”
“Right,” I say, shifting my cold feet.
“Then when I asked Dad about it, the floodgates opened and he was all Gabby this, Gabby that. Like you were the one person he truly cared about.”
I well up at that, looking away.
“So then I wanted to meet you because I didn’t have any other siblings. But he wouldn’t let me—said it was complicated, that you wouldn’t want to see me.” Her voice wavers again.
“I wouldn’t have minded,” I say, possibly meaning it. “I didn’t have any family either.”
“But your mom…” she says, watching me intently, and that’s when I understand why she said what she said about her mother still being alive.
I look away, at the photo, then at Alice’s painting on the fridge. Anywhere but at her. I know what’s coming.
“Dad said she died the day I was born. It had to have been linked, Gabby—can’t have been a coincidence.”
I look at her then. “It wasn’t. It was the final straw.”
“My birth killed her?”
It’s unfair that she thinks that, but I can’t bring myself to say so. Instead, I nudge my hand closer to the knife.
“I grew up watching him cheat over and over,” she says, “treating my mom like absolute shit, watching her get weaker. And it made me harder, more determined not to end up like that myself, you know?”
I do. But again I don’t say a word. My fingers are now touching the knife.
“So I started to fight back, making myself physically strong. He was good at that: took me for runs along the beach, one of the few things he ever did with me.”
Something in me stirs, a recognition. He was good at that with me too. I ran because of him—with him and then from him.
“I put up with it for years, but then when I found out about you and what happened to your mom, I lost my shit. We had a huge fight and he got really angry and said you’d always be okay because of this place, that he was going to leave it to you in his will. And he told me about the handprints, Gabby… I know about that.”
I wrap my fingers around the knife, feeling exposed, vulnerable. Clinging to this house, fighting for it childishly, and all for four imprints that were just limestone, shells, chalk, sand.
“Then eight years ago, I realized he was going to leave Mom,” she says. “For some ho at work with big tits. Even though he’d already upgraded your mom for my mom. He was gonna do the exact same thing again, with someone even younger. So I had to do something about it. Because I couldn’t just stand there and watch her…”
Fall apart? Like my mom?
Something else about what she just said is worrying me though. I gaze at the photo on the counter, Dad’s face smiling up at me.
“So I took my time, planned it all out. There was no way I was going down for it, not after everything he’d put me through. I had to be smart, make it look like an accident.”
Eight years ago. There’s a stabbing sensation in my chest, an alarm ringing in my head.
“He was on heart meds, so I started swapping them with vitamins. And I asked him to start running with me again, like I wanted to bond. Then I waited for a heat wave, crazy hot…and on the hottest day, when he’d been off his meds for long enough, we set out for a run.”
She pauses, the stabbing sensation in my chest now a clench as I watch her mouth moving, the words slowly meeting my ears.
“There was this killer hill… I told him he was as strong as any twenty-year-old—that if he could make it, he could do anything he wanted. Of course, I meant do anyone he wanted…” She grimaces, rubbing her arms, shivering. “He accepted the challenge, like I knew he would, arrogant bastard, and off he went.”
I gaze at her, my throat burning. “You…killed him?”
“No. The hill did. And his out-of-control ego.”
“He had a heart attack?”
“Yeah, he did,” she says matter-of-factly.
I feel my blood draining through me, pooling in my feet. I can’t breathe or move. I can’t hear anything above the commotion of cells, tissues, organs.
“Are you okay?” She goes to round the breakfast bar to join me, before deciding not to, stepping backward. I’m holding the knife upright, didn’t even realize it.
“You killed him…? Why? Why would you do that?”
She stiffens her shoulders, widening her stance. “Well, isn’t it obvious?”
“No, it isn’t! You’re going to have to spell it out for me, Ellis, or whatever the hell you’re called.”
Her hands withdraw to her sides and she looks military again, the way I always think of her.
“So you’d inherit the house.”
“What?” My wrist buckles with the weight of the knife, almost dropping it.
She looks confused. “I thought that’s what you wanted. Isn’t that what you wanted?”
“No!” I shout. “I wanted him alive! I loved him!”
“Loved him?” she shouts back. “How can you say that? He was a twat, a cheating arsehole, just like Fred!”
At the sound of his name, my skin goose bumps, my mind backtracking through her words—what she said about the messages.
They weren’t threats. Not aimed at you, anyway.
“Who were you threatening?” I ask.
When she doesn’t answer, I do it for her. “Fred?”
Her head jerks as she lifts her chin. Still, she doesn’t answer.
“Where is he?” I say, holding the knife higher. “If you don’t tell me, I swear I’ll—”
“I don’t know. But it’s too late anyway.”
“For what?” I stare at her in horror. “What have you done?”
“Gabby, I’m sorry, I…”
Dropping the knife with a clatter, I run to the hallway, pushing my feet into my sneakers, returning to the kitchen because it’ll be faster leaving from there.
She’s already outside, holding her shoes. I push past her. “Gabby, wait! You don’t know what you’re doing! It’s not safe!”
I block her from my mind, focusing on getting away. The garage door takes an age to open. She’s behind me, grabbing my arm. “Gabby, listen to me! Please! Don’t do this!” It’s the most humane she’s ever sounded, the most genuine, but I’m not listening to her.
Scrambling to the car, I’m a fraction faster, reaching the doors before her, locking them before she can get inside. I don’t know where she is, whether I’m going to kill her, knock her down. I don’t check or care. Reversing as fast as I can, the tires screech out of the driveway. It’s only as I get to the end of the road that I realize I don’t know where the hell I’m going. I just have to find him.