Chapter 21
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Grace is sitting cross-legged at the card table with a faint smile on her lips.
“Hi,” I manage. “You gave me a fright.”
There’s another torch on the table near Grace, but I’m too terrified to move. What is she doing here in the dark?
“Your nerves must be shot,” Grace says. The way she says it, I imagine her marching my nerves in front of a firing squad. “You’re always frightened, aren’t you?”
“I wasn’t expecting you.”
“That’s not what I mean. I’m saying you’re existentially frightened. You live in fear. Just like Bradley.”
I want to defend Bradley, but stop myself just in time. “Can you turn on the torch? There’s one next to you on the table.”
She doesn’t move, but I still can’t make my body step towards her. If anything, I want to sprint out the door and never look back.
“You don’t know me,” I say, trying to assert a confidence I don’t feel.
“No. That’s right. You know, that’s one of the truths of my profession.
I don’t know anyone, least of all myself.
There are always more layers to the onion.
” She uncrosses her legs, and even in the dark, that movement seems more elegant than anything I could ever manage.
When I was with Bradley, it felt so right.
But now that Grace is here, I can’t understand why he’d ever pick me over her.
“Is that the right metaphor, do you think? Are our different selves just deeper layers of the onion? Or do we change into someone else entirely?”
I try to parse the words, but my heart is pounding uncomfortably against my chest. I can’t think straight. I feel like I’m teetering on the edge of a cliff.
“Anyway, I’ll never know you, Brie-like-the-cheese,” she continues.
“And do you know why? Because you’re capable of terrible things.
You can hurt people. You can kill people.
I know that sounds implausible, but we all can.
It’s a head trip, because the Brie I think I know isn’t capable of that at all.
She’s quiet and sweet and loves animals.
She dedicated her youth to helping her mother.
That person wouldn’t seem to be capable of hurting a fly. ”
“Can you turn on the torch, please, Grace?” My voice is small and girlish. I feel like a kindergartener trying to get the attention of the school principal.
“But you can kill, because you’re human, and that’s all our species has ever done. Hurt and kill each other. So that means I don’t know you at all. But it also means, I think, that you don’t know yourself.”
I feel a crackle of electricity in the room. It’s a magic trick, this ability to transform the world around her. An hour ago, I thought my life was a romantic comedy, but when Grace is around, it seems more like a tragedy. Or horror.
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Because you’re a child. Bradley tells me you’re nearly thirty, but all I see is a little girl trying desperately to pretend that life is something other than what it so obviously is.”
“Turn the light on,” I say, raising my voice.
She laughs, mocking my false bravado, before finally picking up the torch. She pulls up the handle so it forms a lamp, then stands and slowly swings it around the room like a detective at a crime scene.
“You’re keeping this place very clean. I can’t say I approve. You’re too tightly bound. People like that always explode, sooner or later. We’re not machines, you know. We’re organisms, flesh and blood. We’re driven by desires and fears, not logic and reason.”
“What are you doing here?” I ask, interrupting her flow.
There are probably a million people who would pay money to hear Grace wax lyrical about human nature, but I’m not one of them.
Now that there’s light, the spell is broken, and my fear subsides—but it’s quickly replaced by a surge of panic.
While Grace was waiting for me in the dark, I was having a quasi-romantic dinner with her husband.
What did she see? How much does she know?
“I just got in,” she says, as if reading my thoughts. “My taxi got lost, so I’m a little late. I thought I’d stop by and say hello to you before surprising Bradley.”
“That’s great,” I say, trying to force a smile. “But Bradley said the roads were closed.”
“What? Because of a day of rain? We need more than that to close the roads around here.” She’s right.
Neil got here without mentioning any trouble on the roads.
Bradley lied to me—or rather, Don lied to Bradley.
She swings the lamp to illuminate my bed, then turns back to me. “I wonder why he said that.”
“Maybe they were closed earlier.”
She lets out a small laugh, then steps closer. “You look nice. Lipstick and all. What have you been doing?”
“Nothing,” I say quickly. “I was planning to go to town, but Bradley…”
“Wanted you all to himself, did he? I thought maybe you’d had company.”
“What? No.”
“There are an awful lot of dishes. Multiple wine glasses.”
“Just my ex,” I say, causing her eyebrows to raise.
“Getting back together, are we?”
“No. Never. He was just checking in on me.”
“Why would he do that?”
“No reason.”
It’s a ridiculous answer, but I can’t tell her the truth. My ex wants to drag me back to the city, but your husband rescued me. I wait for her to challenge this blatant lie, but instead, she takes one last look at the bed, then hands me the torch.
“I’d better go check on the husband. Shine the light on the steps, would you?”
She retrieves a small leather suitcase from beside the door and is soon walking towards the trail.
It’s only when she’s gone, and my breathing has returned to normal, that I realize what an idiot I’m being.
I can’t just let her leave. Bradley’s waiting for me—and for all I know, he’s planning to seduce me again.
What if he's playing romantic music and has poured me a nightcap? If Grace finds him like that, it will all be over. She knows he’s not expecting her, and I’m wearing makeup and a nice dress.
It will be all too easy to put the pieces together, especially for someone who thinks about crime and betrayal for a living.
I stand, momentarily paralyzed, before launching down the steps and running along the path. When I get to the driveway, I scream as loud as I can.
“Grace!”
She’s not far away—but the scream isn’t for her, it’s for Bradley. With any luck, he’ll be able to not only get changed but hide all the other evidence of our time together. The food, the wine, the dishes. Who knows what else?
“What is it?” She turns back to me, annoyed. She looks like an actor who’s left the stage and is tired of performing. I wonder if that’s what it was, back in my cottage. Just another performance by someone who sees no difference between life and art.
“Your book,” I say. “I read it.”
“Yes?”
“Um, I loved it.”
She gives me a withering look. “You have terrible taste. Stick to birds, Brie-like-the-cheese.”
I watch helplessly as she continues towards the house, and it’s only when Bradley arrives at the door fully clothed that I allow myself to relax. They hug, and then she pulls him in for a kiss. To my mind, it’s not just any kiss, either. It’s a let’s-have-sex kiss.
I watch for a moment, astonished at how well he is pretending, and as I turn to walk back to the cottage, I wonder how he’ll get out of it. Will he pretend to have food poisoning? Will he say that he had too many glasses of wine? Or will he just say he’s got a headache?
But then the thought hits me: He won’t get out of it.
Not unless he wants to bring up the divorce tonight, and he’s already made it clear he’s not going to do that.
I feel winded, but I tell myself I need to stop being an idiot.
He’s a married man, so what did I expect? That he’d never touch her again?
Anyway, I told him I only wanted to be friends, and I meant it.
I get inside, kick off my shoes, and make a cup of tea. When it’s ready, I sit on the edge of the bed and reach for my Kindle. I need to distract myself.
But that’s when I realize what an idiot I’ve been. Bradley wasn’t the one acting when they kissed on the doorstep—Grace was.
Because right next to my Kindle is a box of condoms.
And next to that, an empty wrapper.