Chapter 62
TOM
I feel like I’m drowning.
Sam’s shoes make no sound on the tiles when he crosses the room; the gun in his hand looks impossible and tidy, as if it belongs on a mantelpiece in a different life. He doesn’t look at the body. He looks at me like a man reading a score and deciding on the cadence.
Boyfriend.
“You’re a couple?” I ask.
“Yes, very much so,” he says, as if we’re discussing an old holiday. “Eighteen years. Since we were teenagers. We met in one of our foster homes.”
The words land with the weight of a book dropped on my chest. “You and Pete?” I ask, because I’m grasping for anything that even smells like an explanation.
Sam nods. There’s a small, ugly pride in the nod. “Together. Together in the only ways that made sense then.”
He looks at me, his eyes wide. “You don’t get it,” he says.
“Me and Pete — we didn’t get families. We got new houses every few months.
New rules. New faces pretending they’d keep us.
We learned early: nobody stays unless you make them.
” He glances at Pete like it’s the simplest truth in the world.
“We had nothing but each other. No safety nets. No inheritance. No second chances. So we built our own. Made our own rules. Made sure nobody could throw us away again.”
He shrugs, like it’s just logic. “You don’t walk through that kind of fire with someone and come out separate. We survive because we stay together. Always.”
I don’t know whether to be horrified or fascinated. My brain, traitor that it is, latches onto small details — the way Sam says “we,” the way he has always known how to dial the volume on a room.
“You did this before,” I hear myself say. It’s not a question.
“A few times.” He answers like a man checking off a list. Not proud, not ashamed. “It’s proved an efficient way of securing our future.”
Pete smiles at his partner. “We did what we had to — to survive. We learned patterns. How to make things look like accidents. How to make people want to be in the same room as you while you move the pieces.”
“But I saw you, you and James… together,” I say to Sam. Even in this moment, I can’t bring myself to say the word “sex”.
Sam nods. “Well, James liked to take his frustrations out on me. He wasn’t going to get it anywhere else, so he just went with it in the end. And I very much let him.” He smiles, “I like my men to get real rough with me.”
“And I’ve always been more vanilla,” Pete says, looking to me. “As you know.”
“That’s the brilliance of open relationships. What one partner can’t give you, you can get from another,” Pete says, like he’s explaining the benefits of a Tesco Clubcard.
There’s a pause, a break while we all process this revelation
Pete places his wine on the side table and stands up.
“So,” he starts. “Now, we all know where we stand, let’s talk this through like adults.”
Before I can respond, Pete taps on his phone and looks up at the TV.
The screen fills again with the same bright, clinical light, the same cluttered kitchen.
The fight, the knife, the red that crawls.
Then the angle that makes everything worse: Tom — me — on top of James, arms wrapped around his torso, face a knot of exertion.
Emma over him, knife in hand, the stabbing motion clear and repeated.
The clip goes slow in my head, the world smeared like a bad camera filter.
The thing that had felt like self-defence in the heat of it becomes something else when it’s replayed in pixels.
“See?” Pete says, his voice as calm as a man describing the weather. “It’s a lot clearer now. You aren’t defending anymore — you’re restraining. She’s the one doing the killing.”
My stomach drops out of me. There is a hollow place where argument lives. “That’s not how it—” My voice is thin. “It happened fast. He lunged—”
“He lunged,” Pete repeats, not unkindly. “But you had the knife away from him first. You had the control.” He leans forward, fingers steepled. “We could take this to the police, Tom. We could tell them every word and let the law sort it out.”
I feel like someone’s speaking through a wall. “I was holding him down to stop him,” I say. “I thought he would have killed Pete.”
“You’ve seen it back now,” Pete says softly. “It’s not a good look.”
It is not a good look. The camera is merciless; the camera makes choices for the world. When you see a thing through a lens that has no mercy and no excuses, there is very little left to say that sounds like a defence.
Pete turns the remote toward me like a judge passing sentence. “So, let’s just all calm down. We can all live happily together in this house. We have fun, don’t we?” he says, all too casually. “And that can continue, but I just need access to your bank accounts.”
The demand hangs in the air, not phrased as a threat but with every millimetre of implication it needs. Blackmail with more polish than the word deserves.
“I’m not going to blow it all in one go,” Pete says, as if to reassure me. “I’m not reckless. Just enough for us to live long term as we have been.”
Sam’s eyes flick to Emma. “With some extra top-up funds from you.” She’s sitting on the floor, knees pulled to her chest, wet tracks down her cheeks. She looks like she could break like a biscuit.
Pete also looks to Emma. “I know you need that video of you in the house the night of the fire. You can have it. Hell, I’ll stand up in court as your alibi to get the police out the way. I’ll just need your funds too.”
“I don’t have any money,” she whispers.
Pete laughs. “Of course, you do. I know your family background. Chris told me all about it. I know how much money he started with. You don’t just lose that kind of generational wealth.”
Emma is the one to laugh this time. “Then, you really don’t know me at all.
I lost the money years ago. Blew it on all kinds of shit.
The expensive clothes, the car, the jewellery, all I have left now is stuff.
But I have no real money. I live month to month like anyone else.
Why do you think I spent two years inside for fraud? ”
“I see,” Pete says. His tone is steady and clinical.
Pete looks at Sam, then back to Emma.
“Then, you’re a complication,” Pete says, almost apologetically. “You’re a messy ledger. If you can’t contribute, then you’re a liability.”
Sam shifts, hands wrapped around the gun like it’s a habit rather than a weapon. He steps towards Emma and there’s a moment when I think he’s going to shoot her.
I hold my breath.
Instead, Sam places the firearm in front of Pete with the kind of deliberate calm that makes my bones go very cold.
Pete takes the gun as if taking a glass of water. He lifts the weapon, hovering it between us.
“So, you’re going to shoot me?” Emma says.
Pete shakes his head. “No, shooting is a last resort.”
“Far too messy,” Sam adds.
“And there’s already been far too much blood to clean up tonight,” Pete says. “This is just to keep the order.”
Pete directs the gun at me.
My body turns to stone.
Then Sam moves.
He closes on Emma with no theatrics, a shepherding motion that has no tenderness.
She has little time, backing into the kitchen worktop as he wraps his hands around her throat so tightly, with a motion that is not sudden so much as inevitable.
His hands are steady and small and far harder than I had imagined.
Emma’s hands scrabble at his grip, nails raking the skin of his wrist. She gurgles, a horrifying, wet sound.
“Sam—no—” I find my voice, and it sounds as if it belongs to a stranger. I look at Pete, who keeps the gun firmly aimed at me.
Sam’s jaw works. His face does not change in any way that shows what he is doing. The room shrinks to the two of them: Sam’s hands around her throat, Emma’s fingers in the air, wild and useless.
Pete watches, inscrutable, as if this is a negotiation and he is intently taking notes.
Emma’s legs kick, and for a moment I see that she is still fighting—still thinking survival in a way I have no grace left for.
Her eyes meet mine once. There’s a plea in them that is not aimed at me but at the life that used to be possible.
“Stop!” I roar and the word cracks like a whip. I want to move toward them because movement is the only thing I can own, but my legs feel like meringue with the gun pointed at me.
Sam’s grip tightens—cruelly, without mercy. “It’s cleaner,” he says, and his voice is the same flat thing he says when he tells me to reboot a laptop. “Quicker.”
Emma’s nails find his forearm, but it’s all in vain. He leans in and the room shrinks to the sound of someone trying to breathe through a sack.
Then she’s still.
Her hands fall, slack. Her face turns away in a way that makes me think she could be asleep, but she’s not.
Sam releases her as if setting down a tool. She crumples at his feet like a thing constructed only for a purpose that has finished. He steps back and looks at me—calm as a surgeon wiping hands.
“Done,” he says.