I’m frozen as I remember that conversation I had with Jake all those years ago. Six months later and Drew was dead as far as I was concerned. Six months later and Jake could very well have done what he’d threatened to do.
‘It’s true,’ Drew says to my silence. ‘He’s always wanted you, and that day, out in the sea, he saw his chance to get rid of me for ever so he could have you, and he took it. And he almost did it – he almost killed me.’
I give my head a shake. ‘You are lying. Jake would never do that. No one I know would do that. I can’t believe you’re lying about him. He’s a good man and in all these years he’s never—’
‘Good man?’ Drew laughs nastily. ‘You really don’t know him at all, do you?’
‘I’m not listening to any more of this nonsense,’ I say. And it is nonsense. Despite that conversation Jake and I had six months before Drew disappeared. Despite what Jake said about feeling guilty about what happened to Drew the first time we made love, I know this is nonsense.
I move to leave and Drew takes me in his arms. Encircles me with his hold and keeps me still, stares down at me until I stare up at him. For a moment, I’m back in the past, in those moments where he made me feel so very loved, so very safe. He lowers his head, his lips aiming for mine, and for a second I almost melt. I almost relax enough for him to kiss me. Because, with Drew, kissing was always the best part of it all …
Instead of melting, though, I push him away. ‘Get your hands off me!’ I snarl at him. How dare he! How dare he show up here and even think about touching me, let alone holding me, moving to kiss me. I take a step back from him. Then another. ‘Don’t you dare touch me again!’
‘I know you don’t want to listen to what happened, but you’re going to have to,’ Drew says. ‘Then you can tell me if you think Jake is a good man or not. Then you’ll understand why I had to do what I did.’
I shake my head. ‘We’ve got bigger problems than this,’ I say to him. ‘And I don’t want to hear anything you’ve got to say.’
‘You have to,’ he replies.
‘I don’t. I don’t want to hear anything from you.’
‘Why? Scared of what you’ll find out about Mr Perfect?’ Drew sneers.
‘I know he didn’t do anything to you, let alone try to kill you, so no, I’m not worried about what you’ll say. I just want to get back to—’
‘If you’re not scared of what you’ll hear, then why won’t you listen?’
‘Because—’ I cover my face with my hands. This was what it was like arguing with him. Circular; round and round. Never enough to say no; always having to justify myself and my reasons or opinions. On and on until it was easier to just give in and let him get it over with. ‘All right, go on then.’
I fold my arms across my chest and stare at the cave wall to the right of his head and wait for him to speak.
When a couple of minutes pass and he hasn’t spoken, I turn to look at him. ‘I can’t believe how beautiful you still are,’ he says softly.
He hasn’t aged much at all. Yes, he has wrinkles around his eyes, but his skin is still that gorgeous chestnut brown. His large eyes still have that sparkle when he looks at me. And his lips, so full and—‘Start talking or I am leaving,’ I say.
‘All right, look, there was so much going on. The minister was about to start the wedding service when we heard the woman shouting that her child was in the sea, remember?’
I nod. Of course I remember. I remembered every single second of it.
‘And remember me and Jake and a couple of the busboys began to run to the water, because we had to save him? The busboys and Jake were much stronger swimmers than me, but for some reason I managed to get to him first. I don’t know if you could see that from the beach?’ We couldn’t – the horizon and the position of the sun seemed to obscure what was happening out there. We all knew there were people in the sea, but we couldn’t see what was going on.
‘The little boy was flailing about, but I managed to hook my arm around his waist to keep him upright, when I saw Jake coming towards me. I knew it’d be all right then, because by that point I was exhausted. I wasn’t sure I’d make it back to shore, especially while carrying the little boy. Jake swam up to me. “Thank God you’re here, bruv,” I shouted to him. And he looked about, checking, I realised later, to see if anyone was around – then he punched me in the face.
‘I wasn’t expecting that, and I let go of the boy. Jake took him, and I was all over the place, holding on to my nose and trying to keep afloat. And then I felt Jake’s hand on my head and he was pushing me under.’
‘I don’t believe that! Any of it. You’re lying.’
‘I’m not, Tessa, I’m not.’ He points to his face. ‘You can see where my nose doesn’t look the same – he broke it when he punched me. I couldn’t breathe. He was holding my head under and I was trying to breathe and my nose was agony.’
‘So he was doing all this while holding on to a distressed, half-drowned child, was he?’
‘Yes. Don’t you think I know how ridiculous it sounds? He did it. The busboys must have got closer to us, because he gave one last push under and then kicked me as he started to swim off. It was only a little kick, but after everything else he’d done, I couldn’t fight any more. I let go and allowed myself to sink. There was nothing else I could do.
‘I must have passed out because when I came round, I was on a beach way, way down the coastline. I didn’t remember what had happened first of all. And when I did, first thing I did was get up and try to work out where I was. My nose was agony and I was confused. I walked for a while but I was so weak. Bits of what happened kept coming to me in flashes. I eventually came to a hotel and there was hardly anyone around except Ellen. She told me that everyone had gone to search for someone who had gone missing in the sea. She was a model and they’d been on a shoot the day before, but now most of them had gone to help search. I knew it was me they were looking for. But after what had happened with Jake, I knew no one would believe me, and it’d be only a matter of time before he tried again.’
‘Can you hear yourself? “Tried again”? You’ve been watching too much television.’
‘I knew you wouldn’t believe me. Ellen did. But then, she saw the state of my broken nose; she hadn’t been charmed by Jake like you and everyone else had. She agreed to help me. She let me stay in her room while I worked out what I was going to do.’
‘Oh, I’ll bet she let you stay in her room. How long was it before you were in her bed?’ I say.
‘It wasn’t like that. How could I even think of being with another woman when I was meant to marry you? I rested in her room for a couple of days to let things settle down. I knew that if I could just talk to you alone, explain what had happened, you’d know that Jake was dangerous. We could start the wedding again. I snuck back to Bussu Bay to see you, and what did I find? You and Jake. He didn’t even wait a week before he was all over you.’
‘He was not all over me, he was comforting me,’ I reply. ‘I was devastated, he was devastated, he was looking after me.’
‘I knew he would never leave your side, and I wasn’t sure what he’d do if he knew his plan hadn’t worked. I was scared, really scared that he’d try to harm you as well. He was completely obsessed with you, I realised. I knew if I could get to England—’
‘How exactly did you get to England?’ I cut in. ‘Considering your passport and all your money were at Bussu Bay?’
‘Ellen suggested we stage a break-in – have a few things stolen, including my passport, and then I could go home.’
‘That was you?’ I am horrified.
‘No, no, not me. Ellen arranged it with a couple of the local lads – told them they could keep everything they stole except my passport. They must have gone too far. I’m so sorry.’
‘You’re sorry? They stole pretty much everything. Jewellery, money, the plane tickets home, my passport, my parents’ passports, Jake’s passport and plane tickets. All our British credit and debit cards. It was another nightmare added on to the one I was already living. We went through all of that so you could get your passport?’
‘They weren’t meant to do that. They were supposed to only take a few things and my passport. Oh God, I had no idea.’
‘It took weeks to sort everything out because Jake and I had no real ID. Weeks we were stuck here without any way of getting home to England, but you just went home without looking back.’
‘That’s not true! I was terrified – for me and you. I knew if I could get to England I’d be safe. I would contact you, and we could go to the police together.’
‘And tell them that ridiculous story? Yeah, right.’
‘Tessa, you don’t know him like I do. He becomes obsessed with someone, and then anyone who’s involved with them becomes a rival that he has to destroy.’
‘Do you really think anyone is going to believe this stuff?’
‘I didn’t know how obsessed he could get, not until we fell out about this girl in college. He started a fist-fight with me over her. A proper knock-down brawl, it was. Over some girl who, it turned out, wasn’t even interested in either of us.’
‘So why did you stay friends with him then?’
‘Because we’ve got a history. You don’t let girls come before your mates. And anyway, afterwards he came up with this pact that, if we both liked a girl, neither of us would go out with her. And we stuck to that. Until you. And when I got with you, he attacked me again. That second time went way beyond anything I’d ever known from him before. He gave me a real pasting.
‘Afterwards he said he could have handled it if it was a one-night stand, but me going out with you was all kinds of wrong. He said he was so angry and he wanted to hurt me. I had to beg him to let me keep dating you.
‘I was going to tell the police everything, tell them what he did to me, and then we would both be safe. But you didn’t come back for weeks. I thought you’d decided to stay in Bussu Bay with your parents. I knew I couldn’t go back to our old flat until you were home because I wanted Jake to think I was dead so he wouldn’t hurt you. Instead, I went to stay with Ellen and her parents in the countryside. She was so generous. She paid for my flight home and made sure someone looked at my nose properly when we got back. She even suggested I changed my name a bit, so no one could find me. By the time I found out that you’d come back to Brighton—’
‘Let me guess,’ I interrupt. ‘By the time you found out that I’d come back to Brighton, you’d realised you had feelings for Ellen and decided it was best all round if I CONTINUED TO THINK YOU WERE DEAD!’ I scream at him.
‘No, no, it wasn’t like that,’ he says quickly, trying to calm me down. ‘By the time you got back, I came to see you and he was there. Jake. And you were pregnant. I watched the two of you. I remember it clearly: you had both just come out of our flat and you took his hand and put it on your stomach to feel the baby moving, I think. And I realised that with me out of the way, he’d got what he wanted: you and now a baby.
‘I knew there was no way on Earth you’d believe what he’d done, not when you were carrying his child. So I went away, praying that now he had a baby and the woman he’d always wanted, he’d settle down and you two could be happy. I knew that, if I popped up in your lives again, I would be putting you and probably your child at risk.
‘I didn’t get together properly with Ellen until months later. I’d started working in her father’s business by then but, when we discovered Marvin was on the way, we had to speedily get married.’ He takes a step forward until he is close to me. ‘I couldn’t believe it when Marvin told us where he and Nia wanted to get married, and that his fiancée’s family owned this place. It was like everything had come full circle. I knew I could finally set the record straight. I could finally see you again.
‘I wasn’t prepared, though, for all the emotions that I felt when we got here. And then, when I saw you again …’ He stops talking. Then lowers his voice to say, ‘I still love you.’
Lies – it’s all lies. But then, there are bits that sound like the truth. Bits that remind me of conversations with Jake that could mean … No. It’s all lies. It has to be. Jake isn’t a killer. And besides …
‘There’s only one little problem,’ I say as I push past Drew, making for the entrance to the cave.
‘What’s that?’ he asks.
‘Nia isn’t Jake’s daughter.’
‘What? What are you saying?’
‘She’s not Jake’s daughter – she’s yours.’
Drew’s eyes almost bulge out of his head. ‘But that means …’
‘Yes, that means your daughter is going to marry your son. Because you were a coward all those years ago and because you slunk away, instead of confronting Jake like you should have done if your story is true, your son is going to marry our daughter.’