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Move, she thinks. Flee. Patrick has been telling her lies. She can’t forget the threatening words of the man on the phone this morning or the anger and intensity in Patrick’s voice last night. It brings to mind the time years ago when Tom had to intervene as Patrick horribly assaulted that man, and she dreads to think what would have happened if he hadn’t. Patrick’s clearly desperate, and associating with ugly, violent people. She’s afraid of what might happen if he discovers she knows he’s been lying.
It’s impossible to stop him from getting in. His pin gives him access to the house. She can only hide. She hurries through the open-plan space and into the corridor leading to their gym. His phone feels as if it’s burning her hand. She wants to get rid of it, somewhere Patrick will never find it, will never know that she looked at it.
She hears Patrick call out, ‘I forgot my phone!’ Her heart thumps. She jogs down the corridor and slips into the Barn’s fitness suite.
Patrick calls again. Frustration has crept into his voice. ‘Nicole! Have you seen my phone?’
She runs through the gym and bolts herself into the shower room at the back, puts the lid down on the toilet and sits on it. I’m being stupid, she thinks. Hiding will make it worse if he finds me. Her brain is still fighting over the contradiction between the caring Patrick who has been looking after her and the man she’s glimpsed over the last twelve hours.
She flinches at the sound of the door to the gym opening. He must have worked out this morning while she slept in. She should have thought of that. So, he’s come to check for his phone here. Surely it’s only moments before he discovers her.
She considers using her own phone to call the police, but he might hear. She wonders if it’s possible to use it to set off an alarm in the house, but she’d still be stuck here, with him.
She stands up. It’s impossible to access the cistern because it’s built into the wall, so instead, she lifts the toilet seat carefully and drops the phone into it. It’s all she can think to do. She flushes. The phone won’t go anywhere, she knows, but she needs Patrick to believe she was using the loo. She washes her hands,dries them on one of her monogrammed hand towels – her and Tom’s initials intertwined – opens the door and pretends to be startled.
‘Patrick! You gave me a shock!’ She puts her hand on her chest and doesn’t have to fake its exaggerated rise and fall.
‘Didn’t you hear me? I’m looking for my phone.’ He takes in her dressing gown, nightie and slippers. ‘You working out in that?’ he asks.
‘No. Just using the bathroom. It’s my favourite one on this floor of the house.’ She shrugs. ‘You know,’ she adds. ‘Comfort.’
Her heart is thumping so hard she’s amazed he can’t hear it. ‘Where did you last have your phone?’ she asks.
‘I’m sure it was in the kitchen. You haven’t seen it?’
She shakes her head. ‘Sorry. How annoying.’
She swallows and it feels as if she’s trying to choke down a tennis ball, but he seems oblivious. He’s sighing and already on his way out of the room, the missing phone preoccupying him. It’s only Patrick being himself, half her brain tells her, but the other half of her brain screams,get away.
‘Do you think you might have dropped it in the car somewhere?’ she asks, following him down the corridor.
‘I’ll check again.’
As soon as he’s left the house, Nicole hurries to her craft room, at the back of the Barn, and lets herself out into the garden. She steps off the deck and slips between the tall grasses, taking the path that leads towards the woodland, from where she can make her way to the Manor without being seen. As she moves, she glances over her shoulder, imagining Patrick following her and grabbing her – and doing what? She’s not sure, but shedoesn’t want to find out. If his temper is on a hair-trigger, so is her anxiety.
She pushes herself to keep running between the trees. She can feel her phone in her pocket. She should call the detective, Hal, and tell him what’s happened, but she doesn’t want to stop now. She’ll do it when she reaches the Manor. Nettles whip at her ankles and the sound of the gate clanging shut behind her sends a shudder through her. She follows a path that’s barely there, and keeps going, hoping she’s heading towards the Manor House, towards safety, gasping with relief when she bursts out onto the lane. She crosses it and finds herself within sight of the Coach House.
39
THE DAY OF HIS DEATH: 09:09
Tom
When Tom wakes again sunlight is pushing through the narrow gaps between the bedroom blinds and the window frames. He sits up.
Nicole isn’t in bed. He listens but can’t hear her in the bathroom. ‘Nic?’ he calls but she doesn’t answer. She’s probably making coffee. He hopes she is. He feels disoriented, dry-mouthed and still tired. The memory of getting up last night is dreamlike. If it wasn’t for the chocolate stain on his T-shirt, he might believe he dreamed it. He wants to tell Nicole about how surreal and beautiful it was out there, in the moonlight.
‘Blinds up,’ he says, but the blinds don’t move. He tries saying it again, sitting up a little, as if that would help, but it doesn’t. Tom’s embarrassed that he can’t get the house’s systems to function the way they should. He’s had the company who installed them back here a few times since moving in and triedto pay attention as the guy tweaked a few settings and explained exactly how everything worked, but Tom has always had a short attention span and became distracted as he felt increasingly paranoid that the man thought he was stupid. He was sure he detected some scorn in the man’s eyes and he heard in his voice echoes of a teacher at school who told Tom that he would never amount to anything because he was by far the bluntest tool in the box and always would be.
It wasn’t just that man, either. Tom was excited when they decided to build the house, but he felt inferior around their architect, then the wine merchant who stocked his wine wall and their garden designer. He thought winning the money would help him rise above feelings like these, but it turns out that it makes them worse, because the money has catapulted him and Nicole into an unfamiliar world, where there are new rules and where people know things that they don’t, and whenever they spend time with these people he finds himself lurking at the periphery of meetings, the fear of saying something dumb gluing his mouth shut when they asked if he had any thoughts, even though he did.
It’s been a shock, and humbling. He expected to enjoy the money, to revel in every aspect of being stinking rich, but apparently ten million quid doesn’t buy you a pass to escape your insecurities, though thankfully it hasn’t been the same for Nicole. She seems to have grown in confidence through the process and he’s happy for her, but he wishes it could have been the same for him.
He gets up, presses the switch to override the blinds and curses when it doesn’t work. Nicole has never said, ‘I told youso,’ about the cranky systems, but every failure makes him feel ashamed that he insisted on them. He jabs at the switch again and this time the blinds rise. ‘Finally,’ he mutters, letting himself out onto the terrace.
He cheers up immediately as he looks out over the pool, which appears perfect in the early light, as does the prairie planting around it, rustling and golden, and beyond, the cliffs, still partially in shade. The birds who nest there are swooping and vocal already, animating the sky. Tom shuts his eyes and angles his face to the sun. It’s going to be another scorcher. The funny thing about living somewhere like this is that he permanently feels as if he’s on holiday, though whenever he thinks that he remembers that even holidays can get dull after a while, and he tries not to take that thought further, to the truth that sometimes feels as if it’s screaming in his face: he’s bored here, and lonely. He misses their old life. He doesn’t know what to do with himself at Lancaut.
He’s been wanting to talk to Nicole about it, to try to articulate the sense of uselessness and dislocation that’s bubbled up inside of him since they moved in, but every time he thinks he might have found the right moment he clams up, afraid to spoil things for her. She loves it here so much and envisages a long and happy future for them in this place. How can he put a dent in that? He can’t. Instead, he’s been trying to keep his feelings at bay with endless new toys – car, motorbike, golf clubs, and more.
