December 2016: later the same night
Emma follows me to the front door.
“Don’t do this, Paul. Think of Mollie.”
Will those be the last words she ever says to me?
“I have to. It’s me she’s waiting for. I have to stop her craziness.” I look at my watch. How much longer will Genevieve wait? “Here.”
I dump my house keys in a glass bowl on the windowsill.
Emma’s auburn hair is matted, her skin pale—when her freckles return next summer we won’t be together. I fix her beautiful face in my mind.
She’s still clutching the house phone, her fingers opening and closing around it as I hoist my backpack over one shoulder. It’s one we bought for Owen and the stitching on the seams is unravelling. I think of the many ways I’ve wronged Emma—separating her from her son, dragging her off to live in France.
I point my key at the Volvo, then change my mind.
“What now?” Anger flashes in her eyes.
“Here.” I hand her the car keys. “Keep the car. I’ll take your bike.”
The rain has stopped but the narrow country lanes are slick and damp as I peddle towards Les Quatre Vents. My chest feels tight and the dank chill in the air makes it hard to breathe. I alternate my hands: one on the handlebars, the other rammed in my pocket to defrost.
As I cross the old bridge, I glance down at the suck and swirl of the brown water, swollen by days of persistent rain. I dismount and wheel the bicycle the last two hundred metres then I notice Genevieve’s Mercedes is parked at a slanted angle in front of the house, a shimmer of silver against the heavy night sky.
I wedge the bike into a straggling winter hedge and continue on foot. Any minute now, Genevieve will spot me and pick me out in the beam of her headlights. I edge forward along the rutted track. As I get closer, I realise the car is empty. Where can she be? It’s more than an hour since she summoned me and the temperature’s dipping below freezing, but I know she’ll be here somewhere, waiting. Because, this time, I didn’t block her message. I replied:
I’m on my way.
“Ouch!”
Without warning, my left foot slides into an invisible pothole and, as I pull it free, my ankle twists. I flex my foot, and glance around. Where is she? The house is locked and shutters bar the windows. Could she have found a way to get inside? I dig my hand into my pocket, find the key and hobble towards the front door.
Inside it’s darker than pitch. Leaving the front door open, I grope my way to the fuse box in the kitchen and flip the master switch. A single bulb glows, weak at first, and then strengthening. I glance round. The windows are closed, the shutters locked and bolted. I check the bedrooms, one by one, and the bathroom.
Where the heck is Genevieve?
I unfasten one of the rear shutters and stare out across the yard to the churned up ground, earth moving equipment and the two-metre-deep pit dug for the septic tank with its tributary trenches for the sand and gravel drainage system. As I ease the shutters closed, I hear a cough.
My clumsy fingers scrabble to secure the metal bar but it drops down with a clang. I turn away from the window as the air fills with a familiar scent of musk.
Genevieve is hovering just inside the front door. She scans my face, as if waiting to be invited in. I stay by the window, gripping hold of the sill. She looks odd. Her eyes are blank with mauve smudges underneath and her hair is dishevelled. She dredges up a smile—too broad, too fake—and spreads her arms wide as she advances towards me.
“Darling.” Her scent chokes me.
“What the fuck?” I intercept the ambush of her embrace, clamp my hands on her shoulders and hold her at a distance. “My daughter!”
Her eyes brim with reproach. “Mollie’s fine. Emma collected her.”
I tighten my grip and shake her roughly so her head judders.
“Stop it, Paul!” She smacks my arms and ducks away. “What’s got into you?” Her eyes narrow as if an animal instinct is signalling alarm.
My hands shake as I fumble for a cigarette. I can’t find my lighter in my pocket, but I remember seeing a box of matches on the windowsill, probably left by the Bergers. Reluctant to turn my back on her, I reach behind me and feel along the sill until I find them.
“Everything’s fixed,” she says, sidling up to me as I strike a match. “I’ve done your dirty work for you.”
My match flares and dies. In the pocket of my jeans, my phone vibrates.
“What do you mean?”
“I’ve told Emma,” says Genevieve. “About us. That you’re leaving her. I knew you’d be too cowardly.”
“Us?” I yell. “There is no us, you bitch!” My self-control is slipping. I ram my balled fist hard against my hip and hold it there. “Was that before, or after, you dosed Mollie with sleeping pills and slashed Emma with a knife.”
She drops her gaze and blanches. “That’s not true. She’s lying.”
“So it’s not true that Mollie’s spending the night in a hospital bed?”
“Oh—I didn’t know.” Her eyes dart around nervously. “I only gave her a couple of pills. I sent you so many messages to tell you she was with me. That we were both waiting for you. Why didn’t you come?”
“You’re not getting away with this, Genevieve.”
“Hah!” She throws back her head and laughs; her voice is shrill and her ghastly red lipstick distorts her mouth. “I’m not getting away with what? What did you get away with? You’re pathetic! I risked everything, waited for you.”
The fury inside me ignites as if my spent match has flared into life. As her laughter turns to a shriek; my head pounds. Her face blurs, becomes misshapen. It’s as if she’s no longer human, but decomposing. On and on she screams. I have to get her voice out of my head. My hands—no longer frozen numb—rise of their own accord, encircle her throat and press.
Her complexion reddens, the tendons in her neck tense, her eyes bulge in a freeze-frame of shock. She’s strong. She clamps her chin down hard against my interlocked thumbs. I squeeze tighter, my hands controlled by a force beyond my conscious mind. I’m shaking with panic, but I can’t release my grip.
Excruciating pain shoots through me as Genevieve knees my groin. The intensity hits my stomach and triggers a wave of nausea. As my fingers loosen, Genevieve ducks away, wheezing, and scrambles towards the door.
I inhale, count to twenty to control my nausea, and follow her outside. The front door slams shut behind me. The charcoal sky creates tangled shadows along the hedgerows but the darkness disorientates me. Her car is still there. Empty. There wasn’t time for her to reach the road but the only other exit is across the field behind the house and through the line of oaks marking our boundary.
My groin aches and my injured ankle throbs as I hobble around the side of the building. Even in daylight our yard is an obstacle course with earth-moving equipment standing sentinel over the churned-up field. In the darkness, anyone who doesn’t know the terrain would trip and fall. I drag out my phone to use the built-in torch and two messages pop up on the screen—both from Emma. One says she’s contacted the police; the other: Don’t do anything rash.
What did it cost her to send that message? After the anguish she’s been through today. Despite the sub-zero chill, I start to sweat. I run my hand through my damp hair. I tried to strangle Genevieve. What possessed me? Perhaps she’s collapsed and is lying out here somewhere seriously injured.
I shine my torch in a wide arc and call out, “Genevieve, where are you? I’m sorry.”
No reply.
“I didn’t mean to harm you. I was angry.”
I pick my way across the yard. If she ran this way, she’d have to scramble past the digger, avoiding the mounds of earth, gravel and sand for the septic tank drainage system. As I step onto grass, pain stabs my ankle. I pause, clinging on to the digger and balance on one foot to massage it.
Something hard and metallic crashes down on the back of my skull. I cry out, then tumble forward, face down—into the pit, into blackness.