AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Thank you,” I whisper, when I can speak again.
He places a finger against my mouth, a sign to make no noise. Something settles around my shoulders, my blanket. And then he leaves.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
PAST
I sat under the shade of an oak tree, my back resting against its trunk, my body exhausted with a mix of stifling heat and desperation. I’d spent the morning trying to look nonchalant as I walked around the grounds, when I was in fact desperately seeking a way out of Ned’s property. It was surrounded, on all sides, by a twelve-foot-high wall; the only way out was through the front gates, which were worked electronically, like the front door. It was hard to accept that for the moment, I was a prisoner in this house, and I was becoming increasingly panicked.
Last night, during dinner, Ned had become impatient when I’d asked again if I could go out.
“Those journalists are still hanging around,” he’d said. “If you go out, you’ll be mobbed. I’m used to dealing with the press, I know what to say, how much to give them. I think you’d find it overwhelming facing them on your own.” He’d paused. “I’m only protecting you, Amelie. I don’t want you saying anything you shouldn’t be saying.”
Or contradicting his version of events.
“But I really want to see my friends.”
“You can, in three weeks’ time.”
“Have there been any messages from Carolyn?”
He dabbed his mouth with a napkin. “If there had been, I would have told you.” He leaned across the table toward me. “Look, I’m only insisting that you don’t leave the house until we announce our separation. Then you’re free to leave, go back to your apartment, tell the world we made a mistake.”
“What about my computer? Has it arrived? You said you’d ordered me one two days ago.”
“I’ll get Hunter to chase it.” He hardened his gaze. “I hope I don’t have to remind you, Amelie, that you went into this with your eyes wide open.”
He was right, I had. The thought of the money made my face burn with shame. I would take it, then give it to a charity that had nothing to do with the Hawthorpe family.
I picked up the sun hat I’d been wearing and fanned myself with it. There was no air today, even the birds were quiet, their energy sapped by the intensity of the sun’s rays. The gentle sound of water trickling from one of the garden’s many water features was a welcome distraction. If it hadn’t been for Ned’s attack on Justine, I realized, I would probably have been happy to wait out the month in this beautiful house. But now, that horrific reality aside, it also dawned on me that the marriage I’d entered into so casually would always be with me. It was something I hadn’t considered: that my past would always include that I was married and divorced by the age of twenty.
I hated that I still hadn’t said anything to Ned about his attack on Justine; it made me ashamed, almost complicit. But I didn’t trust Ned, the lies he told. Justine hadn’t gone to Paris to interview Ophélie Tessier, as he had said. She was in France, but she’d left because he’d paid her off in exchange for dropping the charges against him. If it was true, it was understandable that Justine hadn’t been answering her phone for Carolyn. She would have been too embarrassed to admit that she’d allowed Ned to buy her silence.
I shifted uncomfortably on the straw-like grass. I could hardly judge Justine for dropping charges against Ned in exchange for money. I wondered if she had been offered a hundred thousand like me. I remembered Ned’s conversation with his dad, and his lie about our agreement having been for fifty thousand pounds.Good luck with that, Ned,I thought grimly. Because if he tried to cheat me out of even a penny of the hundred thousand—well, thanks to my father, I had a plan.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
PRESENT
Tears of bewilderment and exhaustion fall from my eyes. I’ve tried to make sense of what happened in the basement, but I can’t.
I’ve replayed it so many times in my head that the sound of the gunshot ricochets incessantly in my ears. And I still don’t understand. Why did they pretend to kill me? Why do they want Ned to think I’m dead?
Remembering how Ned didn’t care that I was supposedly dead, my tears flow faster. There was no remorse that his wife of a few weeks—his damage limitation wife, because that’s all I ever was to him—had been shot. There were no recriminations, just a question—is she dead?
There’d been an argument after, I heard shouting from somewhere in the house, the kitchen, I think. One of the voices was the other abductor’s, the other was deeper, did it belong to the man who usually came to my room? Who had placed his finger against my lips, so that I would be quiet? I close my eyes and fall asleep.
When I wake, he’s in the room.
“I don’t understand,” I whisper. “Can you explain what happened down there, why you pretended to shoot me?”
But, as always, he doesn’t answer. If I could scream, I would. My fingers itch to hurl the tray after him again as he leaves the room.
It hits me then, that I’ve had this weapon all along. Why hadn’t I thought of it before? I play it out in my mind. The man stoops to place my tray on the floor and I upend it, sending the porridge over him. And while he’s trying to work out what has happened, I grab the tray and smash it over his head. Then the same scenario as before—I get out of the room, lock him in, except that this time, instead of edging my way down the hallway, I run. I know my way now, I know there’s nothing to trip me, I know that once past the double doors of the room farther along the hallway, I’ll be able to see light under the kitchen door. I know that it won’t be locked, I know there are French windows, I know there are things I could use in the kitchen to smash them open if I had to. And in the kitchen, there will be knives to protect myself with.
My captor might have showed me kindness, but I will hurt him if I need to. I’m angry with him, angry that despite seemingly saving my life, it’s made no difference. He is still keeping me in this room, in the dark. And if Jethro Hawthorpe does pay up, and my captor doesn’t do as I asked, and I’m released with Ned, I’ll never be safe. Because Ned will come after me, and when he finds me, he will kill me.
CHAPTER FORTY
