It’s like he’s slapped me. The truth is suddenly, brilliantly and harshly, illuminated. ‘If I slept with someone then it wouldn’t just be him who cheated! He’d have an excuse to divorce me. He wouldn’t be the bad guy. He could blame me!’
‘Kate thought he only needed a nudge and then he’d be free.’
‘And she could make her move. They could be together.’ I drop down onto the sofa, the whisky and the cigarette smoke combining with the knowledge of Kate’s betrayal, making me feel suddenly sick as a dog.
Konstandin glances over the texts again. ‘It looks like they didn’t speak or see each other for almost a year but then they met up again about four months ago.’
‘At Marlow’s christening,’ I say, doing the maths. I was right.
‘Afterwards Kate sends a lot of texts pleading with him to speak to her. He ignores them all but for …’ Konstandin abruptly stops reading.
‘What?’ I ask.
‘Nothing,’ he says. ‘You don’t need to hear it.’
‘What?’ I ask, grabbing for the phone. Konstandin keeps a tight grip on it, pulling it away from me but I tear it from his hand.
‘Orla …’ he pleads, reaching for it back, but I dance out of his way.
Rob: I love you, Kate, and one day maybe we can be together but right now I need to be here, with Marlow. I can’t walk out on them.
Kate: We could be a family. You, me and Marlow.
Rob: I wish, but I can’t.
The howl that’s been trapped inside me for days finally bursts free. All the grief and worry and anger erupting out of me. I fall to my knees, hurling the phone across the room. The world collapses in on me. He wanted to be with her. He wanted to be a family with her, to replace me with Kate. He only stayed out of a sense of duty. And all that talk from Kate about a house in the suburbs with a garden, about starting a family. She didn’t need to start one, she was planning on stealing mine! Becoming stepmother to my child! And then probably having a baby with Rob.
And maybe Rob killed her because she threatened to tell me before he was ready.
I want to tear a hole in the ground with my bare hands and curl up in it, pull the earth down on top of me and stay there, buried in darkness. I want the pain to stop, the noise in my head to stop, the questions racing around my brain to stop. And then suddenly darkness does fall but it’s just Konstandin, kneeling in front of me, wrapping his arms around me. He holds me, stroking my back, and I collapse against him, sobbing so hard I soak his shirt.
I don’t know how long the pain consumes me for, how long I cry for. It feels like an eternity, but at some point I become aware I’m hiccupping, not sobbing, and that the sound of Konstandin’s murmurs in my ear in a language I don’t understand are louder than my crying. After I stop crying Konstandin disentangles himself and stands up.
‘Let me make you a cup of tea. Or coffee?’
‘Coffee,’ I mumble, my head throbbing. ‘Thank you,’ I say.
He nods, then walks into the kitchen and after a few seconds I follow him in.
He heats water in an espresso maker as I stand watching. ‘The police say Joaquim and Emanuel have alibis. It wasn’t them.’
He nods. ‘You should check where Rob was on Friday night. And Toby.’
‘It could have been a stranger,’ I say. I don’t want to believe it could be Rob.
‘Most murder victims know their murderers.’
And I don’t want to dig further into that memory I have. I’m afraid to unearth it from the darkness. The moonlight on water. A woman screaming bitch!
Konstandin pours the coffee into a little espresso cup. ‘I must ask you something,’ he says, handing the cup to me. ‘You’ve never wondered if it was me? If I had anything to do with Kate’s death?’
I open my mouth to deny his question, but what’s the point of lying? ‘Yes,’ I tell him. ‘I’ve considered everyone. Every person we met that night, down to the old man who owns the shop opposite the apartment. I’ve gone mad with wondering.’
‘But do you honestly think I might have anything to do with it?’
I look him in the eye. He gives me his same even gaze as always. The truth is