. She heard something rustle behind her and turned to see a camellia bush, its leaves splaying in the wind, a bird, hopping about.
‘– But let me tell you something! She’s been happier with me these past seven years than she ever was with you! We’re a family now. You can’t destroy us. You won’t. I won’t let you! Hanna has tried to deal with you kindly. Compassionately. But this stops here, right now.’
Emil sat quietly across the table, allowing Max his bite-back, giving him his voice. But as his calmness extended ever further, Bell sensed something unsettling in the unexpected generosity of that. Max’s words should have been body-blows to him, everything he never wanted to hear. He should have been retaliating with more insults, more anger, blows even. Max, his best friend, had been having an affair with his wife. He was entitled to be angry about that. But to give Max his moment so calmly . . .
‘Did you never wonder why she was so anxious that I shouldn’t remember your affair?’ he asked after a moment, in a collected voice.
‘Because she knew you’d be a fucking psychopath about it!’
Emil shook his head slowly. ‘No. It wasn’t that. It was worse than that.’
‘Don’t give me that! You’re obsessed with her. You’ve pinned your whole life’s worth on getting her back because you can’t bear that she fell in love with me and she’s still in love with me!’
He held his hands up in docile surrender. ‘You’re right, Max. I was obsessed with her. She was all I could ever see. I didn’t know why, she just filled my head – awake, asleep, all the time. She was the last thing I saw before the car hit.’
‘Yeah-yeah-yeah, here you go again!’ Max snarled, out of patience and at the end of his tether now. ‘The last thing you saw. The first thing you saw.’
‘She was the last thing I saw before the car hit.’
Max stared at him, picking up on the pointed echo. He gave a frustrated shrug, as if to say, ‘So?’
‘That was why she didn’t want me to remember your affair. It was why she came over here in a storm when she heard I’d had another blow to the head; it was why she didn’t leave my side. She was terrified I might start to remember things. She was terrified I might remember why she was the last thing I saw before the car hit.’ Emil’s eyes narrowed as he slowed his words right down. ‘Ask me why she was the last thing I saw before the car hit.’
‘Emil –’ Hanna cried, jumping up from the seat. Her voice was thin and high, as though reeded.
Oh God! Bell gasped, her hands flying to her mouth as Max stayed rebelliously silent.
Emil’s voice was quiet, when it came. ‘It was because she was driving the car, Max.’
‘No!’ The word was a scream, Hanna crumpling against the table, a denial and an admission all at once.
Bell heard a sound behind her again, but she couldn’t move, couldn’t react. This couldn’t be true. But she knew it was as she saw the contempt in Emil’s face as he looked at the woman he loved . . . She had hit him? Because she wanted to be with Max?
Max stared at Hanna in disbelief, his face visibly draining of blood. ‘. . . Hanna?’
No one could speak. Not even Nina, her mouth hanging open slackly. None of them could process it all. It was too much – Hanna and Max’s affair; Hanna, desperate to leave her marriage . . . responsible for putting Emil in the coma?
‘Hanna, you’ve got to talk!’ Max said urgently, running around the table and pulling her up by her arm, but she was limp, her head shaking, legs buckling as she wept and sobbed. ‘Is this true? You were in the car?’
‘Yes!’
The wind gusted again, whipping her hair upwards like a flickering flame.
‘You hit him?’ Max whispered, looking ashen.
‘No!’ She looked back up at him with wild eyes.
He frowned, looking bewildered. Overwhelmed. ‘But you just said –’
‘I know! And I was in the car! I was driving! Because I was chasing after him!’
Bell frowned. It was all nuance. Semantics. She was in the car. The car was the last thing he saw –
Hanna gathered strength suddenly, or rage, her body stiffening and straightening her up as the truth aired for the first time, stretching out, taking up space. She glowered at Emil with a look