‘I think you tipped off my dad. Am I imagining this, Megan, or am I right?’
Megan doesn’t answer straight away. She takes a deep breath. ‘It was really fucking scary. Seeing you bleed like that. I thought you were going to die. I had to do something.’
‘So, you were there with your dad?’
I turn to Megan and she’s crying hard now. So many tears. ‘No, Emily. I was there with my mum. And your dad.’
51
Lexi
I can’t believe what I’m looking at and yet I can. Confirmation of my worst fears. No, more than that, confirmation of a betrayal I couldn’t ever have imagined. An email confirming two flights to Acapulco International Airport, Mexico. One way. Leaving tonight. Leaving in two hours.
I call Detective Inspector Owens and tell him what I’ve found.
‘You are quite sure?’
‘I’ll forward the email to you.’ I sound calm, dispassionate; the DI probably thinks I’m heartless. I am. My heart has been ripped out. It’s as though Jake has plunged his fist through my chest and grabbed my heart, gouged it out bloody and beating, stomped on it. Just as easily as someone might break a window. I am shattered.
The DI says he’ll alert the airport, get people there immediately. ‘They are probably at the gate. We can get the flight stopped.’
The doorbell rings. I have no idea who to expect. Not Jake. I hope it is Emily. I’ve texted her already, she confirmed she is at Megan’s, even though the app on my phone told me this, I needed to have her confirm it. I don’t want her alarmed but I have to keep her safe. I’ve told her to come straight home in an uber but I guess, even if she follows my instructions to the letter, she’ll be another half an hour.
It’s Jennifer.
I almost pity her. We were once so close. Ostensibly we were three legs of a stool, equally involved and committed to one another, but we both secretly knew Carla was the most glamorous, the most sexy. The most spoilt. We did occasionally allow ourselves a moment when we shared a look of envy as we noticed Carla’s long, smooth, tanned legs, or her new designer dress, new diamonds dropping discreetly from her earlobes. That’s why discovering Jake’s affair with Jennifer had been such a shock to me. I’d have had my money on Carla being the one he fancied. I guess because I was right in the end, I backed the right horse, I’m holding the winning ticket. It doesn’t feel like it. I feel like a loser.
‘Where’s Jake?’ Jennifer demands, crossing the threshold of my door, coming in uninvited.
‘Not here,’ I say simply and honestly.
She throws me a look of pity. I absorb it and wait for the moment I can spit it back at her. ‘Lexi, I’m sorry but it’s time you accepted the situation. I know you know that Jake and I are—’
‘What? What are you?’ I demand.
She colours, not a blush exactly, something closer to a flush of irritation. ‘We’re together.’ I raise my eyebrows but bite my tongue. ‘I’ve left Fred, and Jake is leaving you. We’re leaving tonight. It’s all arranged. You lost. I won.’
‘Where are you going?’ I ask.
‘I don’t want to discuss that with you.’
‘Mexico?’
She looks surprised but nods.
‘Wrong, Jennifer, you are not going to Mexico with my husband. Carla is.’ Understandably Jennifer looks confused. ‘He’s upgraded, apparently. Having money allows you to do that, doesn’t it?’
‘I, I don’t believe you,’ she stutters.
‘I’m sure you don’t, but I’m telling the truth. He played you as he played me. He played us all.’ Her mouth falls open. I can see her little pink tongue, a tongue she used to lick and suck my husband with. I feel strangely close to her but loathe her too. I remind myself she is not the worst. She had an affair with my husband, but Carla is worse. She had an affair with my husband and kidnapped my daughter to secure a ten-million-pound ransom.
And Jake? Jake is the vilest of them all.
How could he have plotted and hurt the way he most surely has? How could he have put his own daughter in such mortal danger? For money? For sex? ‘The police are on their way to the airport. They’ll arrest the two of them there. I think Patrick was in on it too. The kidnapping, that is. Not the affair. They double crossed him too. He’s already at the police station.’