I listen to her out there, the soft shuffle of her feet, theplumphof her turning over Lillian’s old books. I relish these last few moments. It won’t take long until she sees the photographs of Stephen on the wall, Stephen and his mother Lillian. Photographs of them gardening, of her visiting him in London, of his smiling face, similar to mine but different. Very different really. But I chose someone believable, it seems. I think I always do. Someone whose passport photo is close enough to me to be plausible. And no one really looks like their passport photo anyway, do they? We all lose a few pounds, we change our hair, we get older.
The room next door has gone silent, she’s stopped moving out there. It must be happening. I go over to the doorway and watch her. Her back to me, as she peers at the photographs pinned to the wall, her hand gently resting on one in particular, a faded color photo. Though her back is turned I feel it happen, I feel the realization slowly take her, sinking into every bone in her body, I feel the air in the house around us thicken. I feel her fear as she realizes that the person in the house with her isn’t who she thinks it is.
She must feel my eyes on her because she straightens, slowly, and turns, trying so hard to keep calm, to stay in control, to not let the huge waves of panic sweeping through her engulf and drown her. She’s already seen what I can do. She saw yesterday in the hospital. She knows there’s no use running.
I give her my most reassuring smile. What else can I do? After all, I like her. I want her to feel safe. All of this is for her.
She holds my gaze. Her expression a careful mask. She’s calculating her options. I would be too.
I step into the room slowly. I don’t want to spook her. She starts to speak but the words catch, she clears her throat and tries again. “You’re not Stephen.”
“No.”
She blinks. “Who are you?”
I think for a second how best to answer.
“I don’t know,” I say, because that’s the truth. If I knew, I wouldn’t be here; I wouldn’t need her.
She takes a moment to absorb this, then nods. “And what happened to the real Stephen?”
I wonder for a moment if I should lie, if I should keep the terrible truth from her longer. But then I realize she can’t help me if I keep lying. “I’m not entirely sure yet,” I say, very carefully, “but I’m pretty certain I killed him.” I drop the British accent now too, letting myself slip back into my American vowel sounds. Her eyes flare, blazing at me from across the room. She swallows. She’s terrified. I can’t blame her. So was I when I remembered some of the things I’ve done.
“I need your help, Emma. Do you think you can help me?” I say it tenderly, I want her to know she is safe with me, she is protected.
Her eyes flash to the door and back to me.
“I don’t want to hurt you, Emma, I promise. I just need your help. I just need you to listen to me, please. I need you to tell me how to fix this. How to fix my mind. Can we just talk?”
She moistens her bottom lip, eyes alive as she studies me intently. She seems to reach a conclusion and her demeanor changes ever so slightly. She seems to settle back into the room. Then nods her head decisively. “Okay. Okay, let’s do this. We can do this. Let’s talk.” She looks around the room, her eyes alighting on the two armchairs that face out to the sea beyond. She gestures over to them. “Shall we?”
43
ZARA AND CHRIS
DAY 13—TIME OUT
Zara’s hair is scraped up tight into a messy bun, loose strands framing her face, as she tries to keep her voice even. “I know it was my idea, Chris, but I want you to come back. Okay?” Chris is perched on the edge of their bed, his eyes fixed on the thick pile carpet they chose together six months ago. “I was angry, Chris. Come on, you’re no angel, you lied to me. You didn’t tell me you knew her, who she was. I just find a text and I’m supposed to understand why you want to go for a secret drink with another woman? We don’t keep secrets.”
Chris stays quiet, he hasn’t told her what happened the night before last either. The kiss. That long, warm kiss fourteen years in the making. He can’t tell Zara how he lights up when he sees Emma, how she lets him look after her, how she makes him feel needed. And how Zara doesn’t. How he needs Zara more than she needs him and no matter how long they’ve been together he still feels closer to Emma.
“Say something, Chris,” she prompts, her voice quiet, hopeful.
Chris looks up at her, at his stuff littering the floor of their bedroom, at the honeymoon suitcase open next to him on the bed. “Honey, if I had told you who she was, you would have just written about it. Wouldn’t you?” He says it almost tenderly because he reasons, who’s he to judge, he promised to love Zara forever and he barely made a year.
“That’s not fair, Chris. I might not be an angel, but don’t pretend that’s the reason you didn’t tell me you’d invited her for a drink. Because you were worried I’d write a story about Charles Beaufort. I’m not an idiot. You asked her out for a drink because you wanted to spend time with her. You missed her, right? You liked her, back then, didn’t you? Did you guys go out? Did you sleep together back then?”
Chris looks at Zara’s un-made-up face—her cheeks are wet, her eyes red, but she’s still so beautiful—and he feels a deep ache of guilt. Marni and he didn’t go out. He never asked her, he’d been too afraid he’d ruin their relationship, their closeness, that he’d scare her away. So, no, they never slept together. And when Marni left, after her father’s death and everything that followed, he thought about her a lot. He wrote her a letter but hadn’t known where to send it; he’d asked the school to pass it on but they couldn’t. So he’d gotten on with his life, he’d gone to university and fallen in love with the closest girl he could find that reminded him of Marni. Thick brown hair, golden freckles, an infectious laugh. This was before he came back to Brancaster and got together with Zara. Perhaps it had been the way Marni left, the gap she left behind in his life, but he thought about her a lot. Less and less over the years, but every now and then so strong. He didn’t think he’d see her again. He wouldn’t have made a promise if he’d known she’d come back.
Chris knows he could tell Zara all of that, but why would he hurt her more? What good would it do to explain the reasons? And Zara shouldn’t have done what she did. “You’re making this about me, Zee. What you did to her was bad. Really bad. It’s like you don’t think the things you do affect people. You broke into her house. You’re so lucky that she hasn’t pursued this. Her hands and feet were bleeding, you know. And what you did, about her identity, that was just cruel, really cruel. It put her in direct—”
Chris’s iPhone blares to life on the dresser, on the other side of the room, its jaunty tune painfully at odds with the tone of their conversation. Chris makes a move toward it.
Zara’s eyes flare. “Don’t you dare answer that, Chris. Not right now.”
Chris squeezes his eyes shut and lets out a loud sigh. He sits back down on the bed as they wait, wordlessly, for the call to ring out.
After the silence settles, Zara collects her thoughts. “I was angry, Chris. I have apologized. I have said I’m sorry. There’sno wayI could have known what would happen yesterday, you know that. Lichfield was hardly my fault. I couldn’t know someone would try to hurt her. You can’t blame me for that—”
