BEX
I don’t stay lying down for long. I pace the room, working out what to do next. Think, Bex, think. Then it comes to me, an idea almost perfectly formed. I stand at the door and hear Jen talking. She says the name Nick a couple of times – I know he’s the editor working on her story. I wait until she finishes the call before I open the door and see her sitting on the sofa still staring at her phone. She looks up, surprised, and tells me I’ve given her a shock because she thought that I was asleep. I tell her I didn’t take the pills.
‘How are you feeling?’ she asks.
‘I don’t know. Nervous. Stupid. Guilty. Sad. Angry. Not a good combo.’
I walk across the room and stand by the sofa. Jen puts her phone back in her pocket. I sit down next to her and she edges slightly away from me.
‘Is your editor still hassling you?’
‘Nick? Yeah, I tried to put him off, but he still wants me to call in at some point today.’
As she continues to talk about the feature I stop listening to her.
‘You know I followed you this morning, don’t you?’ I interrupt. ‘To Colchester. I waited until you left the flat and then I trailed behind, watching you.’
It’s obvious that she’s not expecting this confession. She blinks and swallows hard.
‘You see, I thought you were about to …’ I continue. ‘I don’t know, I thought you might be on your way to do something to Laurence.’
‘What – what do you mean?’
‘I know we’d talked about it – giving him a fright – but I thought you’d got it into your mind to go ahead with the plan by yourself. I assumed that you were so angry on my behalf – after what I’d told you – that you intended to harm him in some way. And I suppose I wanted to see it. Witness it. After what he’d done to me, I wanted to see him suffer. So I called in sick at work and followed you. But then, when you started to walk down towards the Tube, I realised that you were going somewhere different and, instead of turning back to the flat, I continued after you. I couldn’t help myself. It was like I was being hypnotised. I saw you board the Colchester train at Liverpool Street and that’s when all the memories started to come back. By the time I got off the train at Colchester I realised that I was trapped in some weird kind of prison. Sorry, I’m not explaining this very well.’
‘No, it’s fine. I understand. Go on.’
‘I thought the only way to escape the past – the terrible thing that happened with my parents, what Laurence did – was to … end it all. Of course, I don’t think I intended to do it. After all, it wasn’t even a proper attempt, and I knew you were close by, ready to save me. I suppose it was a classic cry for help. I realise I must sound pathetic to you.’
She takes my hand, but her skin has a clammy quality.
‘Don’t be silly. You’re not pathetic. You’ve been through a lot, suffered terribly. You’ve been incredibly brave.’
I look her straight in the eyes. ‘I’m going to ask you something and you must answer me honestly. Okay?’
‘Of course.’
‘I think I’ve found a way of helping us both. It involves … Laurence.’
She repeats his name like a whispered incantation. ‘Laurence.’
‘I know we agreed to give him a shock, a scare. But what if we … if we went further?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘From what you’ve said I suspect you must have wished him dead – after what he did to you, after what he still might do to you. After what he did to me. I could help you … I could help both of us.’
‘You’d be willing to do … that?’
‘Of course – you know how I’ve always been there for you.’
‘But m—’
She can’t bring herself to say the word: murder.
‘You know that map of the Heath I showed you, the one I marked up showing the sections covered by CCTV? Like we said, we could attack him when he was out jogging, but instead of just frightening him, we’d finish him off. And the beauty of it is, we wouldn’t be caught. Nobody would see us, we’d make sure of that – we’d do it in an area not covered by any security cameras. We’d make it look as though he’d been attacked by … I don’t know … by a stranger, a teenage gang member, make it look as though it was a robbery gone wrong.’
Her eyes widen in astonishment, expectation, excitement. She sits there silently, taking in the implications of what I’ve just said.
‘But why would you want to help me?’
‘As I was standing on the station platform earlier I realised just how much damage Laurence had done. I know it’s some time in the past, but the rape …’ I break off, pretending the word is choking me. ‘Seeing him on the Heath, seeing what he did to you, remembering what he did to me, set off some kind of, I don’t know what you’d call it, some kind of trigger or something.’ I run my hand through my hair. ‘I’ve gone mad – sorry. I’m talking nonsense. Ignore me.’ I stand up to go back to the bedroom. ‘Perhaps I do need that sleeping pill after all—’
She reaches out and grabs my wrist. If she pressed a little harder I’d start to feel a band of pain.
‘No, it’s not nonsense,’ she says. ‘Sit back down and talk me through it all. Tell me again what we need to do.’