The deceit is crippling, like an unknown force rippling through her body, slowly shutting down her vital organs, one by one.
Beth drives the car in silence, the pair of them contemplating their next move while Alice’s phone rings off the hook.
“How can you be so sure that Nathan’s the vendor?” asks Beth eventually.
“Because the vendor is the only other person who would have been told that completion’s delayed,” she says.
“And you were buying it for a million pounds?” asks Beth incredulously. “How much do you think Nathan bought it for?”
“It’s worthless!” says Alice, as she bangs the dashboard with a closed fist. “He’d have got it for a song because nothing can be built on it. It’s no-man’s-land.”
“Shit,” says Beth. “He was going to do it all over again.”
Alice leans back on the headrest as a text from Matt pings through on her phone.
Good news! Looks like the payments to Visions are all kosher as they’re a subsidiary of Excelsior—the vendors on Japan! Will talk you through when you’re back in the office.
“What do you want to do?” asks Beth.
Alice counts to ten in her head, concentrating on taking slow deep breaths in and out. “I want to kill him, is what I want to do.”
“Who was that disgusting man?” asks Beth, sounding as if a lightbulb has gone on in her head that no one else can see. Alice waits for her to offer more.
“That creep who owned Temple Homes. The one who assaulted you.”
Alice shakes her head, not knowing what he’s got to do with anything. “David,” she says. “David Phillips.”
“Where’s that site? The one he wanted you to work on.”
“Bradbury Avenue,” says Alice, a slight irritation to her. How was this solving the very big problem of Nathan?
Beth snatches a look at her watch. “Will it still be open?”
“What, the site?”
Beth nods.
“I don’t know. Why?”
“Call David and find out if you can meet him there.”
Alice turns in her seat. “Why would I do that?”
“Just ask him to meet you there now.”
“Absolutely not,” snaps Alice. “I never want to speak to him again.”
“Just do it,” says Beth, her eyes not leaving the road in front of her. “I’ve got an idea.”
“And what do I do if he says yes?”
“We’ll revert to Plan B.”
Alice begrudgingly looks up his number, unsure of whether she deleted it from her phone after their encounter. She almost hopes that she has.
When she sees it, she fights the urge to lie to Beth. “I don’t want him to think that what he did was okay,” she says quietly, remembering his hands on her behind, his rough fingers kneading her breast.
“Believe you me, he won’t get away with it,” says Beth. “If you please just do as I say.”
“Are you honestly asking me to trust you?” says Alice, her voice high-pitched and laden with irony.
“Yes,” says Beth firmly, and for some reason Alice believes her.
“David!” she enthuses, superficially. “It’s Alice. How are you?”
“Oh, Alice,” he replies. “Well, this is a surprise. I thought after—”
“It was a misunderstanding,” she says. “And not something that should interfere with business.”
“Well, I’m pleased you feel that way. I have to say, I was somewhat surprised by your overreaction.”
Alice bites her lip, desperately trying to stay calm.
“Listen, I was wondering if I could take a look at the site after all? Just to get a clearer picture of your vision for the interior. That is, if you’d still like me to…”
“Of course,” he booms. “It’s still very much a building site, so we have to be careful, but I’ll gladly show you around. When are you free?”
“I was thinking in maybe half an hour or so, around six, if that works for you.”
“I’m afraid the site is closed for the day now,” he says.
Alice looks to Beth who spins her finger, intimating for her to wrap the conversation up.
“Ah, that’s a shame as I’m literally coming past it. Never mind, perhaps another time.”
“Well, if you’re passing, I suppose you could pop in. It’s all supposedly locked up—health and safety and all that.” He laughs throatily. “But if you go around the back, there’s a loose panel that you can slide across. Don’t tell anyone I told you though, or they’ll come down on me like a ton of bricks. I’ve already been paid a visit because kids treat it like a playground, and if anything happens to one of them, apparently it’ll be on my head. How ridiculous is that?”
“Crazy,” says Alice, desperate to get off the phone as Beth gives her the thumbs-up.
“Perhaps we could meet for dinner to discuss the way forward. I’d hate for you to miss out on this opportunity, just because…”
Alice cuts him off, unable to listen to this odious little man any longer.
“Fine, I’ll give you a call tomorrow,” she says before putting the phone down and turning to Beth. “Now what?”
“Just ask Nathan to meet you there,” says Beth authoritatively.
“But what for?”
Beth turns to look at her and they share a momentary understanding. An unspoken agreement that everything will be all right.
“Where the hell are you?” barks Nathan through the loudspeaker. “What’s going on? We’ve got to complete on Japan.”
Alice feels bizarrely detached—as if she’s landed in a movie of someone else’s life.
“Did you hear me?” he goes on. “Time’s running out.”
“Who for, Nathan?”
“What do you mean, who for? Us. You. AT Designs…” He sounds slightly hysterical. “If we don’t do it now, we’re going to miss this opportunity. I’ve worked so hard for this, Alice.”
“You have,” she agrees, though on the opposing side to her, it seems. “Meet me at the Temple Homes development on Bradbury Avenue.”
“What? Why?”
“We got the go-ahead on the job I pitched for.”
“This isn’t the right time, Alice—we need to get Japan done first.”
Alice looks at Beth, her eyes wide, her thoughts frantic.
“Just get him there,” hisses Beth, under her breath.
“The only chance of getting this ‘done’ is if you meet me at Bradbury Avenue.”
“Jesus, I’m on my way,” he says gruffly.
“Wait here,” says Beth, as they park up in one of the adjacent roads to the Temple Homes site.
“What? No!” says Alice as she wrestles to undo her seatbelt. “I’m coming with you.”
“Just give me five minutes with him,” says Beth, leaning back into the car. “He needs to know what he stands to lose if he doesn’t give me the money back.”
Alice leans her head back onto the headrest and laughs falsely.
“Do you honestly believe that he’s going to pay you back?” she asks.
“If he knows he’s about to lose everything … you, the girls…”
“Do you think he cares enough?” says Alice impatiently. “What part of his behavior in the last hour has made you think that he has mine and the children’s best interests at heart? He thinks he’s about to defraud me of a million pounds. He’ll be intending to leave immediately—he’d have to, before I found out that he’d sold me a worthless piece of shit. Do you honestly think that on his way to wherever he’s going to go and hide, that he’ll suddenly develop a conscience and think, Oh, hang on—I’d better pay Beth back her mother’s life savings from ten years ago?
“If what you’ve told me is true, we need to work together to make sure he never does this to anyone else, ever again. It’s the best we can hope for.” She softens her tone. “I’ve done what you’ve asked me to do. Now let me go and speak to him.”
Beth considers this for a moment, as if sizing up the options. “I’ll give you five minutes, then I’m coming in.”
Alice walks around the back of the boarded-up site until she comes to a loose panel that she can just about squeeze through. She looks up at the four-story building, its slab floors and ceilings being held in place by metal stilts. A dormant crane stands against the open-sided structure.
She climbs the concrete staircases up to the top floor and looks down to where Beth’s car is parked. Nathan’s BMW speeds down another adjacent street before coming to an abrupt stop as he bumps it up onto the sidewalk. Everything about him looks chaotic, while Alice feels strangely calm.
He finds the same loose panel as she did and jumps over the pipework laid out along the muddy trenches.
“Alice!” he calls out.
“I’m up here,” she replies, the whipping wind carrying her voice.
“What the hell is going on?” he says when he reaches her, a little out of breath. “Why have you dragged me out here? We haven’t got time for this, you need to authorize the bank and Yahamoto and get Japan done.”
“I’m not completing on Japan,” she says, her voice wobbling.
He starts to come toward her. “You have to, darling. We’ll lose a hundred thousand pounds if we don’t.”
“Is that not enough for you, Nathan? Wouldn’t you have been wise just to take the deposit money and run?”
“Wh-what?” he says, as his eyes slide from side to side. “What do you mean?”
“But you wanted to hold out for the big one, didn’t you?” Alice goes on. “You got greedy. What were you going to do with the money, Nathan? Do you have another life all lined up, ready to walk into? Were you going to use the money to charm your next victim? Like you did me.”
“Darling, you’re not well,” he says, opening his arms out to her. “I know you’re back on the tablets, you’re drinking too much, you’re allowing things to get to you and mess with your head. You need help.”
Without even thinking, she steps forward and slaps him hard across the face. He holds his burning cheek with his hand and looks at her in shock.
The mask finally slips. “You’re going to go through with Japan,” he hisses. “Get on the phone now and authorize completion.”
She stands there, jaw set, but her heart is beating so fast she’s sure she can feel it banging against her ribcage. “I’m not doing it, Nathan.”
He lunges at her and pins her against a concrete pillar. “You don’t have a choice,” he says, his breathing heavy. “Just get on the phone and do it.”
“No,” she croaks, shaking her head as much as she’s able to.
He hits the wall above her head with his fist. “Fucking do it. Now!”
Alice recoils as his knuckles pass within millimeters of her face. She feels unable to breathe, her lungs burning, as she struggles to keep calm. Nathan grabs her roughly by her cheeks and she’s sure she’s stopped breathing altogether.
“Nathan!” calls out Beth from the top of the stairs.
His head spins around. “You?” he questions, as if unable to believe what he’s seeing. He looks from Beth to Alice and back again. “What the fuck…?”
“Is it true, Nathan?” asks Alice, his grip on her face weakening. “Did you steal Beth’s money?”
His eyes are wide, his pupils dilated.
“You owe me,” hisses Beth.
“For what?” laughs Nathan hollowly. “It was your own greed that brought you down.”
“You killed my mother,” she says.
“That’s a little overdramatic, isn’t it? Did I force either of you to give me money? Or did you give it to me willingly?”
Alice wants to close her ears, so that she can’t hear what her husband was capable of in a different life.
In this life, she says to herself.
“You were going to do it again, weren’t you?” says Alice, trying desperately hard not to cry as the reality hits her. “You were prepared to walk away from our marriage and children, for money.”
“I’ve done my time,” he spits. “There isn’t another man on this earth who would have put up with what I’ve had to. Constantly having to reassure you, convince you that nothing was going to happen to me, that I wasn’t going to leave you like your beloved Tom did. You sucked me dry, Alice.”
“Don’t you dare put yourself in the same sentence as him,” she screams, hitting Nathan’s chest with all the strength that she can muster. “You will never be the man he was. He was cut from a different cloth. You don’t even come close.”
He grabs hold of her wrists and leans in so that his face is just millimeters from hers. “Cut from a different cloth, you say? I very much doubt that. I think we’re a lot more similar than you think.”
“Leave her alone,” says Beth, stepping forward.
“Or what?” he snarls.
Beth raises her arm to hit him, but Nathan catches it and twists it up and around her back. His face is distorted and beads of sweat are dotted on his forehead as he moves toward the edge of the building, taking Beth with him.
“Get on the phone,” he says to Alice. “Authorize the deal.”
“Why are you doing this?” she asks. “When did you become this person I don’t recognize?”
“You made me like this,” he spits. “You, her, him…”
“Him?” Alice questions.
“Darling Tom,” he says, snidely. “The golden child who could do no wrong.”
Alice shakes her head in confusion, while Beth winces as he tightens his grip on her.
“You’re not making any sense,” says Alice. “What has Tom got to do with any of this?”
“He took what was mine,” says Nathan. “You both did.”
Alice looks to Beth, her expression as puzzled as her own.
“You think that AT Designs is all yours?” he shouts at Alice. “Well, it isn’t. Whatever Tom put in, half of it was mine. So all this time you’ve been bleating about it being Tom’s company, how his interests have got to be protected, how you’ve got to do right by him…”
“Nathan, you’re … you’re not making any sense,” stutters Alice, feeling as if she’s being suffocated by his words. “What do you mean? What are you saying?”
“A million pounds for Japan is what I’m due. It’s rightfully mine. It’s what I should have had all along.”
“Why?” asks Alice.
“Because Tom and I are cut from the same cloth.”
Alice shakes her head. “You couldn’t be further from the man he was if you tried. You’re nothing alike.”
Nathan throws his head back and laughs. “And yet so similar, don’t you think?” He waits for Alice to take the bait, but she looks at him dumbfounded.
“Come on,” he exclaims. “Didn’t it ever occur to you how similar we are? How our profiles match in certain lights. How our mannerisms mirror each other.”
Alice can’t separate her lucid thoughts from the living nightmare she finds herself in. She thinks back to seeing Nathan walk into the garden of the psychiatric unit; feels his warm eyes taking in his surroundings before they settle on her. They’d seemed gentle, familiar. Had she been drawn to him because there was a comforting resemblance to the man she’d just lost?
Had the way he sometimes ran his hand through his hair reminded her of someone else? Had his slightly lopsided grin subconsciously infiltrated her brain, masquerading as someone else’s? Had she fallen for him because he seemed so much like Tom?
“Wh-what are you saying?” falters Alice.
“I’m Tom’s brother,” says Nathan bluntly.