Chapter 67 Leila
Leila
I haven’t seen or spoken to Elise Vernon in fourteen years. I can tell by the steely look on her face as she walks toward me that she has very much not forgiven me for what happened. What I did to her.
We used to come here, to Nightingale Dene. It was beautiful in the summer. The trees were rich with lime-green leaves, and we’d lie on the grass, take turns buying ice-cold drinks from the café.
“Well,” she says, approaching me on the wide, ornate bridge we’ve walked over more times than I can count. The sound of the river rushing underneath is amplified around the park. “I hear congratulations are in order.”
She looks the same as she always did. Well, before she changed to look more like me. A blunt-cut black bob rests just above her shoulders, not quite skimming the fitted dark green coat she’s wearing.
“Cut the crap, Elise. Just tell me what you want.”
Her eyes widen, and a tiny smile appears on her face.
“I don’t think you’re in a position to be making demands,” she says. “You know why I’ve contacted you.”
“I know you have it,” I interrupt. “What’s the plan? Bribe me? Take the phone to the police?”
“Don’t you want to know how I got it? How I knew it was there?”
She’s playing with me. She’s waited a long time for this moment. Rule #8: Be Patient. Now she has her time for revenge, she wants to enjoy it.
“I can see you’re dying to tell me.”
“You see, this is your problem, Delilah. You’re very clever—astoundingly so—but you get so wrapped up in your own cleverness that you miss things.” I watch the white, cold air leave her mouth and dance into the sky. “You didn’t see me the night you ran out of Innocence, did you?”
I’m taken aback.
“What?”
“This is the bit you’ll struggle with. It’s difficult to admit you made mistakes—you thought you’d been so discreet, didn’t you?”
There’s no point in denying any of it. Not with her.
“I saw you leaving one Friday night when I came to pick up my godson. He works at Innocence, too. Told me you went there every week at the same time and left at the same time, and I thought, ‘Hmm, why would a married woman be doing that?’ No. Why would you be doing that?”
She performs every word with delight. She’s building up to something.
“I simply had to find out what you were up to, so I kept going every Friday to watch, and, sure enough, there you were. Bang on time. Just as Kit had said. Having an affair with the doorman.”
Anyone else would think this was mad, stalking someone week after week. Obsessive. But I understand. After everything that happened, I would have done the same. She’d found her opportunity, and she was going to take it.
“You always looked different leaving that place. Lighter. Actually happy. I noticed it that very first Friday. But that night, you looked terrible. Panicked. Naturally, I was intrigued. Delilah? Scared of something?
“I followed you to Pickford and watched you park just outside that house, fiddling with a phone. You didn’t get out of the car, you just sat there.
And then you went straight to little old Audrey’s house, which I knew by then was very late for your usual visit.
You went straight into the front bedroom.
I watched from the road as you turned the light on. ”
She’s right. I had missed all of this. How could I have been so fucking stupid? I’d been so wrapped up in dealing with Jack’s phone that I never even stopped to check if anyone was following me.
“None of it made sense until I saw the news the next day, when I saw that the doorman had been arrested for murder. I knew immediately you’d been involved.
Not only that—my instincts told me you were the one who killed him.
Getting someone else to confess to a crime you committed?
Well, that’s exactly the kind of thing I knew you’d do.
Because you can’t be trusted, can you, Delilah? ”
“Stop calling me that,” I snap. “It’s not my name anymore. It’s not who I am.”
“You think a different name changes who you are?” She laughs, but it is callous. “I mean, bravo to you for fooling everyone. I was almost impressed, watching you play the humble, nice girl at that lecture you did at the school.”
I hate that she can see right through me.
“You’ve changed your hair, I see. Not too drastic.
Again, clever. Let me guess—you couldn’t remain blonde, in case anyone saw you leave the club, but couldn’t go full-on brunette, as it’d be too obvious a transformation.
What did we say? If you do something subtly over time, nobody realizes anything has changed. ” She looks wild now, euphoric.
“What do you think your colleagues or followers would do if they knew the truth? About who you really are? The things you’ve done.”
“Enough! Stop this, please!” I plead. “What do you want from me? Money? Is that what it’ll take to get you to leave me alone?”
“Are you kidding? You’ve got to be. After what you did to us?”
And there it is. Elise’s wound. The one she’s been waiting to make me pay for.
When I met Elise, it was off the back of sixteen years of emotional, physical, and sexual abuse.
I was out of control, and I liked destroying things as much as I hated it.
I despised myself for the behavior but relished the power I finally felt.
Elise was determined, headstrong, and ambitious, with aspirations to set the corporate world alight.
She wanted respect, and like me, craved power—and was prepared to do anything to get it.
We both hated our fathers and had been made to feel worthless and undeserving of love.
The shame we felt as a result manifested as destructive behavior toward ourselves and others.
We had suffered for so long, we pretended we enjoyed it.
We dressed it up as a sport, as fun. It was nothing but a cry for help.
It’s no coincidence we both ended up desperate to be professionally successful. In the absence of paternal validation, it was the next best thing and would surely prove to everyone—including ourselves—that we were, indeed, worth something.
But, as I have come to find out, it doesn’t work like that. Self-worth is an inside job.
Elise’s father had always made it impossible for anyone else in their family to rise to the top. He enjoyed making the rest of them feel small. She’d had enough of that life by the time I met her.
And so had I.
We both wanted more.
Her father was Queen’s Counsel and head of a set of chambers in Durham. I knew from the moment I met him when I was sixteen that I wanted what he had. Chester Vernon commanded respect, people listened to him, and so I became set on training to be a barrister. I wanted a taste of that deference.
She’d invite me to spend school holidays at her house. It was like nothing I’d seen before. They had acres of land. Staff. Chester gave me advice about what I needed to do to increase my chances of gaining pupillage. I made it clear I’d do anything to succeed. Anything.
He saw me as a tragic case; a poor, working-class orphan girl who was just trying to do well for herself against the odds.
Even intelligent men don’t know poison when they taste it.
It was in my final year at Cambridge that I suspected Chester wanted me.
By law school, I was sure. It was an arduous task, titillating him for that long.
But it was necessary. I had to make sure I succeeded.
And so, for six months, I gave it to him in every filthy way he wanted.
Rule #2. I became his fantasy, his addiction.
I intoxicated him to the point where he would have done anything to get me into his chambers.
I never intended for Elise to find out, but Chester slipped up.
The ultimate betrayal. Not only did her best friend fuck her father, but Elise had to live with the fact that I received more love and validation from him than she ever had.
“I wasn’t the only person involved, Elise,” I tell her now.
“I haven’t spoken to my father since it happened. Too busy looking after my mother, who you destroyed. How is good old Chester, by the way? I hear his new child bride is pregnant?”
“It was fourteen years ago, Elise. And sometimes…”
“Oh, go on.”
“Sometimes, these things just happen,” I say, cringing once the words have left my mouth.
“Do you think I’m stupid? This was all part of your game. I was just a pawn to you. Right from the very beginning. You befriended me to get to my dad, to sleep your way into his chambers. And it worked. The only person you care about is yourself.”
Her words punch me in the chest. They aren’t true, either.
Elise was my best friend. Yes, Chester became part of my plan, but that came later.
It was never about him at the beginning, but there’s no point denying it.
She knows too much of the bad parts of me for it to be worth trying to convince her of the good.
“You knew the rules. You used them just the same as I did,” I say, trying to stay calm. Yes, I’ve done terrible things. But Elise has, too. We did them together.
“My father!” she spits at me. “Because of you my family broke up!”
“Sorry, Elise, but knowing Chester the way I do—if it wasn’t me, it would have been someone else. It probably already had been.”
“Who the hell do you think you are? You think you’re cleverer than everyone else, don’t you?”
“Trust me, I don’t. And I am sorry. I am. I’m a different person now. I’m trying to be better.”
She laughs so hard, she has to turn away from me. It echoes around us in the darkness. The sound of it hurts my ears.
“You really believe that, don’t you? That you’re different?” She snorts.
“Who are you to decide whether I’ve changed or not? You know what your problem is, Elise?” I lean in toward her and, my voice almost a whisper, I say, “You just need to get over it.”
She’s caught off guard. Of all the things I could say in this moment, she didn’t expect those words.