everything at once. You can’t see your husband’s face when you’re staring at the knife in front of your own.
‘When you got angry with me and went back to bed, I sat there and stared for a few minutes, just stared. Watched one room after another turn in slow motion. Every time the lounge came back, it was the same – no woman’s body. Then I closed the tour down – your tour. I decided to start from scratch, in case that made a difference. All I could think about was how the dead woman could possibly have disappeared. I didn’t ask myself why I was having to reconnect to the internet – I was barely aware of doing it.’
‘You didn’t wake me up,’ says Kit quietly.
Of course I didn’t. ‘No. You were awake. Doing a convincing impression of somebody asleep.’ Those long, slow breaths, the stillness . . . Both of you, you and Jackie, lying still, pretending. Lying.
‘You knew I went to Cambridge on Fridays, looking for you, looking for evidence of your other life at 11 Bentley Grove. You must have known long before I told you.’ I feel disorientated as I pull the story, piece by piece, out of the darkness. I still can’t grasp what it means, still can’t see the full picture. It’s as if I’m shining light on one fragment at a time, trying to connect each new part to the others I’ve managed to gather together.
‘You didn’t go every Friday,’ Kit says. ‘I could always tell. Some Thursday nights you’d be massively on edge – you’d ask me what time I was setting off to London in the morning, what time I’d be back at the end of the day. You wanted to know how long you had.’
I close my eyes, remembering how exhausting it was – pretending to have one motive, concealing another. I needn’t have bothered.
Needn’t bother with anything, ever again.
No. Keep talking. Keep telling the story, before the chance slips away. Kit has spent so long and worked so hard trying to keep my reality separate from his. I need to tear down the barrier. We are going to die here, together; I want us first to live, just for a short while, in the same world.
‘Jackie knew exactly when 11 Bentley Grove went on the market. She works for Lancing Damisz. Worked,’ I correct myself. ‘She’d have known all the details. You both knew that when I went to Cambridge that Friday, I’d see the “For Sale” board outside the house for the first time and be desperate to look inside. I rang them, you know.’
‘Who?’ Kit brings the knife closer to my throat.
‘Lasting Damage.’ I hear a noise, a manic laugh, and realise it’s coming from me. ‘I wanted someone to show me round there and then. The woman I spoke to told me no one was available, it was too short notice. Was it Jackie who told me that?’
Kit says nothing, and I know I’m right. I shiver: cold feathers on my neck.
‘You knew I’d come home and go straight on the internet to look at the pictures. That’s why . . .’ I stop, sensing the presence of an obstacle without knowing what it is. Then it comes to me. ‘How did you know I wouldn’t go to an internet café? I thought about it. If I’d known where one was . . .’
‘We figured you were bound to,’ Kit says. We. Him and Jackie. ‘Didn’t matter. We knew you’d look again at home, soon as you could. You were so suspicious and paranoid by then, once wouldn’t have been enough for you – you’d have had to check, in case you’d missed something.’
‘You stuck to me like glue when I got home, all evening, right until we went to bed. I remember thinking it was odd that you didn’t do any of the things you normally do: watch the Channel 4 news headlines, go for a quick pint before dinner. All you seemed to want to do was talk to me. I wasn’t suspicious – I was flattered.’ After six months of not trusting you, I still loved you. ‘When we went to bed, you read your book for ages – much longer than usual. Did you agree a time with Jackie, beforehand?’
Through my hair, against the back of my head, I feel Kit nod. I wait for him to say something. All I hear is ragged breathing.