Chapter 32
Imove to go, to run, to flee.
Alex tries to stop me, but the way I tell him not to – screaming at him, arms flailing, physically pushing him away – proves shockingly effective. He stands back, staring at me in horror, while Annalise stands behind him, doing some version of the same.
They’re afraid of me, I realize.
For some reason, this makes me want to laugh. Maybe I do. Maybe that’s why they’re looking at me like that.
Behind them, in the courtyard, faces are turning this way, trying to see what’s going on. Other faces are lit by the blue glow of their phones. The weapons of my destruction shine brighter than the fairy lights.
Every single person is here tonight because they are a part of that WhatsApp group, so every single one of them will read that article – and then go on to find dozens more, if they wish.
And then they’ll know.
Who I am. What I did. Where I’ve been.
Every last detail of it.
The whole sordid saga has been conveniently sent to everyone’s pocket. Illustrated, so there can be no confusion. And with just a couple of taps, they can pass it on.
This is bigger than you, Annalise said. This isn’t even about you.
But it is. There’s no denying it now.
Someone is trying to force me out of the house. Away from this place. They’re launching bombs at my second chance. And there’s no big mystery, no complex plot, no labyrinthine conspiracy. The perpetrator is the obvious suspect and his motives are plain and simple.
Jason wants me gone.
That’s it. That’s all.
And that’s enough.
I’m running now, out of the cafe. On to the street.
Up Delaney Row. I dart straight to the door of my house, which is cloaked in darkness.
I left it at lunchtime; not a single light is on inside.
But only I have a key now, so the best place for me to be is inside of it.
Once I’m safe, I’ll call Garda Murphy. Tell her everything. Let her help me.
I don’t think I’ve any other choice now.
But Delaney Row only has one streetlight, and when I stand in front of my door it’s directly behind me, so my body blocks the light. The mix in my veins – fear, adrenaline, alcohol – is making my hands shake. I fumble with the keys, then struggle to connect them with the lock.
I’m on my third attempt when, out of the corner of my eye, I see a shadow detach itself from the dark.
A solid figure, moving towards me.
Jason.
It’s too late. He’s already here. He was waiting for me.
My breath dies in my throat, my insides paralysed, terror forcing my body to strangle me from the inside out.
But when the shadow says, ‘Hannah?’ it’s in a timid whisper.
And a woman’s voice.
Thick, dark hair just resting on her shoulders. The woman I saw standing behind me, Sunday afternoon on Main Street, reflected in the window of Harrington Properties. Who nearly tapped me on the shoulder because I thought that she thought she recognized me.
She angles her body towards the light now, banishing the shadows from her features, and I realize it’s—
‘Erin?’
‘I didn’t know what else to do.’ Her eyes aren’t on me but behind me, around us, scanning. ‘Can we go inside?’
I don’t waste any more time trying to open the door by touch. I take out my phone, turn on the flashlight and beam it at the lock. Once it’s open, I reach in to turn on the hall light and then hurry us both inside. I shut the door again, flip the deadbolt, slide the safety chain into place.
Only then do I see Erin, properly, for the first time.
She looks awful. So much older, now – and not just because she literally is; I haven’t seen her since the trial.
She has dark shadows under her eyes, deep lines etched on her face, hollows in her cheeks.
She’s lost weight, but too much. She looks frail, brittle, breakable.
Her hair is coarse and uncombed, with a neat two-inch streak of silver marking her parting.
Her clothes are too big for her, dowdy and worn out, and her fingernails are bitten to the quick.
She looks nothing like the woman I remember and everything like the woman I’ve become – only worse.
I’ve endured, but Erin looks like she’s enduring still. What the hell has he done to her?
She’s frowning at Alex’s plastic crate, sitting in the living-room doorway.
‘Were you doing some work?’ she asks.
‘What?’
She points. ‘The drill.’
‘Oh, no. Fitted a safety chain. That’s all.’
‘You need to change the locks,’ she says.
‘I did. Just this morning.’
She nods. ‘Good. That’s good.’
‘Does he know you’re here?’
Erin wrings her hands, bites her lip. ‘I hope not.’
‘Come on.’
I usher us down the hall and into the kitchen. But when I flip on the light, she immediately reaches out and flips it off again.
‘No,’ she says, glancing at the black mirrors of the window above the sink and the expanse of the sliding patio door. ‘Don’t. Just in case.’
Ice shoots into my veins.
‘What’s going on?’ I ask.
‘I should’ve come sooner, I know. But I was afraid to.’
‘You know what’s been happening here?’
Erin nods. ‘Unfortunately. Well, most of it.’
‘Where’s Jason? I was going to ring the guards—’
‘I think we’re OK. We have time to talk, anyway.
Before you do that. There are some things you need to know.
But …’ She looks at the patio door and, when I do too, I see us reflected in it, framed by a rectangle of light from the hall.
‘Do you think maybe we could go upstairs? I’m sorry, I know how it sounds. It’s just—’
‘No, no. It’s fine.’
I lead the way. Erin doesn’t move as fast as I do, and I hear her trip a little behind me on the stairs. I decide the bedroom is our best bet. There’s no light to turn on in there, but enough light spilling in from the hall to see.
I hang back by the door while Erin walks straight across the room to the window to look out, but from a position where she herself is hidden from the view of anyone who might be outside looking up.
‘Erin, what’s going on? What are you doing here?’
‘What are either of us doing here? Do you ever think about that?’ She turns back to me, eyes lingering on the word on the wall, only glancing at the stain exposed on the floorboards.
‘Do you think he made us like this, or picked us because that’s how we already were?
That’s what I think about. About what it means to be women a man like him liked. ’
I haven’t met Erin enough times to know this for sure – and I’ve never once met her in what you could describe as normal circumstances – but it strikes me that she might be drunk, or maybe on medication.
‘Where’s all your stuff?’ she asks.
‘I … I don’t really have anything. I only got out a couple of weeks ago.’
‘Prison must have been a nightmare.’
‘It was.’
‘You didn’t deserve that.’
I exhale. ‘What matters is that I survived it.’
‘You were calling people today. Looking for me.’
‘I just wanted to check that you were all right.’
‘Why?’
‘I don’t know.’ With her standing here in front of me now, alive and well, the truth seems silly. But the way she looks, and the way she’s acting … Maybe it was justified. ‘With everything that’s been going on, I just got it in my head that—’
‘You think he’s dangerous,’ she says, cutting me off.
‘Is he?’
She bites her lip and looks at the floor, which I take as an answer.
‘Why didn’t you sell it?’ she asks then. ‘The estate agent was sure she’d get half a million. More than enough to start again.’
‘I should’ve,’ I say. ‘I’m going to, now.’
‘He didn’t think it’d be a problem, putting your name on the house. He thought he could just do it.’ Erin shakes her head. ‘Fucking idiot.’ Abruptly, her head snaps towards the open door. ‘Are you expecting someone?’
My nerve endings alight.
‘No, why?’ I say. ‘Did you hear something?’
We both hold our breaths, listening.
I’m sure Erin must be able to hear my thundering heart, but that’s all I can hear.
‘Sorry,’ she says then. ‘I’m just … I don’t know, wired. Paranoid. You definitely locked the front door?’
‘And latched the safety chain.’
‘And only you have a key?’
I lift the hand that’s still holding it. ‘We’re safe.’
‘Well, I’m not sure that’s true, but … OK.’ She exhales. ‘Good.’
‘Did you leave him?’
After a beat she says, ‘I had to.’
‘When?’ I ask.
‘After the trial. When we went back. By then, he couldn’t pretend any more and I couldn’t pretend that I didn’t know he was just pretending.’ She smiles sadly. ‘So I left him in Australia and came home.’
Came home, but without telling anyone. Why?
‘How did you know it was here?’ Erin asks.
‘What?’
She nods at the floor. ‘The stain.’
My phone dings.
It’s an unusual sound – an actual text message, I realize on a delay. I wonder if it could be Alex, assuming I’ve silenced WhatsApp. I haven’t, but I’ll be deleting the bloody thing first chance I get.
But when I take the phone out of my pocket and unlock the screen, I see a message from a phone number.
No name; the sender is not in my contacts.
And they’ve sent a video.
The preview suggests footage from a security camera. Greyscale, captured from a height. A shop window takes up most of the frame; the view is through it. Twenty seconds long.
‘What’s that?’ Erin asks.
Ding. A second text arrives, from the same number that sent the video. It’s an explanation for it. This is Garda Murphy. I’m sending you security footage from a shop on Main St that points at Delaney Row. Monday between midnight and 2.45 a.m., only one person goes in or out. Do you recognize her?
‘Is it him?’ Erin asks, her voice rising. ‘Is he here?’
‘I don’t know.’
I tap the video, making it full screen, and tap it again to play it. I watch as a shadow enters the frame, falling on the footpath outside the shop window.
The woman casting it soon follows.
As she walks past, she lifts her head and looks straight into the camera.
I might not have recognized her if I hadn’t seen her recently. If I hadn’t met her again tonight, for the first time in years.
If she wasn’t standing in front of me.
Erin.