Roses Are Red - Miranda Rijks Page 0,95

She’s on her way over, as she’s working on a legal document for me.’ I bite my lip. That sounds very suspicious, but Patrick doesn’t question it. It will be awkward if I admit to him that I am changing my will and leaving the bulk of my estate to my children.

Patrick is driving slowly with both hands gripped tightly around the steering wheel, his forehead creased. He turns left out of our drive onto the dark country lane. We’re both quiet for a couple of minutes as he navigates the narrow roads. My heart is beating fast. I’m really unsure about confronting Marianne.

‘Right, let’s go over exactly what you’re going to do,’ Patrick says. ‘I’ll stay in the car out of sight whilst you check if Ajay’s car is there. If it isn’t, ring on the doorbell. If Ajay answers, run. If Marianne answers, then ask her if Ajay is there. Once you’ve established that he isn’t at home, send me a text message.’

I lean down and rummage in my handbag for my phone. It will be better if I have it in my coat pocket.

‘Shit,’ I say quietly.

‘What’s the matter?’

‘My phone, it’s not in my bag.’

‘For God’s sake, Lydia! Why the hell haven’t you got your phone with you?’ He thumps the steering wheel.

‘I’m sorry. I thought it was in my bag.’ I have another feel around. No. It’s definitely not there. How frustrating. I was sure I had left it in my handbag.

‘It’s so irresponsible not having your phone. You know that Ajay is dangerous. He’s tried to poison you, cut the brakes on your car, threatened you at home, undermined you at work by exchanging the Knit It Qwik machine for the NitNakNok–’

I inhale. Loudly.

How the hell does Patrick know the names of the machines? I certainly never told him that detail. But what if…?

I turn my head very quickly to stare at him. Patrick looks away, out of the side window, but his jaw is tight, a nerve pinging, and despite the low light I can see he is abnormally pale. It strikes me, making me breathless. It was Patrick. My husband exchanged the machines. But why? I look at his fingers, which now are gripped so tightly around the steering wheel, they are white.

‘What did you do?’ I whisper.

He swerves the car to the left, onto a grass verge, underneath a row of beech trees, their bare branches hanging low over the roof. Patrick kills the engine. We both sit for a couple of moments in silence. My heart is beating so hard, it feels like it is going to fly out of my chest. And then the internal car lights go off and we’re plunged into darkness. But a car goes past and it catches his face. His pupils are large black orifices and I can sense myself being pulled into them.

‘What?’ I ask again, but the hoarseness I have only recently lost reappears, making the word sound unintelligible. ‘What have you done, Patrick?’

30

I stare at this man who is my husband, who I thought I knew, who declared his love for me over and over.

‘Did you pretend to be Ajay? Did you swap the knitting machines over to make me fail?’

It seems ridiculous, petty even. Why would Patrick do that? I pray that he will deny it. That he will laugh and say that my imagination is working overtime, that I am crazy. But he doesn’t. Patrick sits there in the darkness, so silently it’s as if he isn’t breathing.

‘Patrick, what’s going on?’

And still he doesn’t answer, doesn’t move a muscle.

‘Patrick, what have you done?’ This doesn’t make any sense. Are Ajay and Patrick working together to undermine me? Did Patrick know Ajay from before? Are they linked somehow?

And then I think about everything else. The car accidents. The silent calls. The noises outside the house. And the peanuts in the granola. Have I been accusing the wrong man all along? Is that why Patrick has been so keen to paint Ajay as the murderer? Is that why the police haven’t arrested Ajay: they simply don’t have enough solid evidence against him?

‘The peanuts in the granola. Was that you?’ I ask, utterly horrified, thinking how it was Mia who saved me, how she struggled to find my EpiPen. Does Patrick want me to die? Am I in danger now, not from Marianne or Ajay, but my own husband? The man I have committed to; the man whom I have been sharing a