Left You Dead

102

On what felt like the longest evening of her life, Eden was a bag of nerves. Riddled with doubts. Thinking how few killers ever actually got clean away with it. There was almost always something, one mistake or one witness or one clever, probing detective who finally got the killer to crack. And even when that didn’t happen, oftentimes killers found themselves tormented by guilt.

She couldn’t stop reflecting on a novel she had read, years ago, called Thérèse Raquin, because it reminded her so much of her current situation. Maybe stupidly, she’d downloaded it onto her Kindle a few days ago and had been reading it again during her isolation. Thérèse was married to her useless husband, Camille, but desperate to be with her lover, Laurent. They murdered her husband and life should have been wonderful from then on, except it wasn’t. They were both so haunted by the knowledge of what they had done that ultimately their guilt destroyed them.

Could she live with the knowledge that she had sent Niall to his death? However much she hated him? However much he had hurt her in the past? And despite knowing he had been planning to kill her?

Would he really have gone through with “getting rid of” her? Was she being pushed by Rebecca, coerced by her into doing this? Was she being weak in not standing up to Rebecca and telling her she couldn’t go through with this? And — she churned this over and over — what was going to happen when she met Niall, face to face, shocking the hell out of him?

Or would it shock him at all?

Niall knew she was almost certainly alive and he would be mad as hell with her. Crazy mad for all she’d put him through. And she’d seen him mad before. Scary. Very scary. Definitely capable of killing, like he did with their baby. Was it smart to meet him, in pitch darkness, on a remote clifftop?

As if further dampening her thoughts, a heavy shower was pelting down outside, rattling as loud as hail on the roof of the small conservatory adjoining the kitchen. It was just gone 10 p.m.

She craved a drink, but didn’t dare risk it — being stopped and breathalysed would screw everything up. Although, she reasoned, as she sat at the little dining table beneath the glass roof, digging her fork into a microwaved pasta — turning it over, letting the steam escape, her stomach too knotted to consider eating even a mouthful — maybe that would be the easy way out of all of this? Just get drunk. Pass out at home. Apologize to Bex later.

Or have a couple of drinks and take her chances. That was so tempting right now. And if she got arrested for drunk-driving, fess up and see what happened. Surely it wasn’t illegal to disappear? OK, she’d left a trail of evidence to implicate that bastard, but she hadn’t harmed him, she hadn’t made any false claims against him. Rebecca was wrong, surely — she hadn’t committed any offence, had she?

More wisps of steam rose from the white slop in the tinfoil carton. Tagliatelle or rigatoni or cannelloni — she’d forgotten what it had said on the label. The cheesy smell made her stomach churn.

Just a small drink? A tiny whisky to settle her? One wouldn’t do any harm, would it?

She got up, poured herself a finger of Macallan and downed it in one gulp. Wincing at the burn as it went down her throat and hit her stomach, she stood tight. Then it began working its magic and she started to feel better. Not much, but a little. Dutch courage.

What the hell.

She raised her glass and toasted her weak reflection in a windowpane. ‘Cheers, Eden!’

Although she wasn’t actually Eden any more. According to the driving licence and passport that Rebecca had somehow obtained for her — no questions asked — well, only a few — she was now Ginevra Mary Stoneley, tenant of Woodbury Cottage, Chiddingly, East Sussex, and the not very proud owner of an inconspicuous, dark-blue, ageing Nissan Micra.

She even had a new appearance, a brand-new hairstyle and bright blonde colour, courtesy of a hairdresser friend of Rebecca who’d spent two hours at the cottage this morning.

Raising her glass again, this time she said, ‘Cheers, Ginevra, you hot, sexy creature!’

Ginevra winked back at her.

Was Ginevra about to become a murderer?

She put the glass down and checked her watch. Needed to pace herself. Only 10.10 p.m. Another twenty minutes before she had to set off for her rendezvous.

She opened the cupboard door, removed the bottle and took it outside, ducking through the rain and putting it on the passenger seat of the Micra. One final nip of it when she was at her destination. Didn’t warriors always get something to stir them into battle? She’d read that the Zulus fought their wars so ferociously because they were tripping on magic mushrooms. The GIs fought in Vietnam high on cannabis. How else could anyone kill a fellow human being face to face?

Then she sat back down and stared at the steadily congealing pasta. Rebecca had told her to think through to beyond tonight. To the far side. To the fortnight they had booked in a villa with its own pool in a resort in Cancun, Mexico. And to their life beyond.

For years, she could never have imagined being with anyone other than a man. Now she could never imagine being with anyone other than Rebecca.

She would do anything for this woman.

And was about to.