Chapter Forty-Three #2
“Well, you can’t be angry with someone who’s got cancer, so I talked it through with her, and she apologized and said she knew that she’d been a bad friend, and it all felt all right again.
“I went with her to every appointment after that. Jack couldn’t do anything about that, of course, because her family were around a lot as well, and he didn’t like to be seen as ‘controlling.’ ” She makes quotation marks with her fingers.
“He was all charm. Then she got really sick while she was going through the chemo, and I think he was grateful for the help.”
Serena dabs her eyes with the heel of her hand.
I take a large sip of tea. “Alice and I got to spend some time together for the first time in years. And she was so supportive of everything I’d been through, and she apologized again.
And after a while, she started talking about the marriage, and what it had been like.
She said that mostly, it was amazing, but she confided in me that Jack had this domineering streak.
He wanted to be with her the whole time, and wanted to know where she was whenever she went out.
Her social life had begun to fizzle out by then, and he didn’t like her talking to me. ”
She coughs. “Well, I told her to leave him.” Another bitter laugh.
“She didn’t, obviously. But after she went into remission, I think she started standing up to him a bit more.
I began to see more of her.” Remission. That word again.
I press my hands between my thighs so Serena does not notice them shaking.
“Once she was a bit stronger, she became more like her old self. Happy, not as self-conscious as she’d seemed since she was with Jack. It was like the old days. She would sneak out for our lunches so he wouldn’t know she’d left.
“We got really close again, and I kept trying to get her to leave him, but she’d always shut down. Then, one day, she confided in me that she’d met someone at the gym. That she thought she was in love. She was planning on leaving Jack for him, but she was scared about how Jack was going to react.
“I was thrilled. I thought she’d finally be able to live a normal life.
Then”—Serena’s voice cracks—“she called me crying again.
Said she thought Jack might have found out.
She told me that she was scared. I offered to have her come and stay with me, but she said she knew Jack would come after her.
Said she needed to collect evidence of his abuse that would support her divorce claim, maybe even a restraining order.
“On the night she died she sent me a picture of herself. Jack was working late, and she was going to see her new man. She was excited. Hopeful, even.” Snot is trickling down Serena’s face.
I watch its progress, but I don’t go for my sanitizer.
I already feel dirty. “The coroner recorded it as an open verdict. But I know she didn’t do it, despite what everyone thinks. I know she didn’t kill herself.”
I take a deep breath. “Jack told me that she died of the cancer.”
Her eyes widen. “Fuck me. He really is the worst human being. Listen, I don’t know how to say this, but I don’t think you’re safe here.
I’ve always thought there was something more to her death than they made out, and due to a lack of evidence or—God, I don’t know—they never did anything about it.
She ‘fell’ off a footbridge. How easy would it have been for him to push her? She was still weak from the cancer.”
I picture it. Jack, hiding in the shadows, waiting for the right moment. A chilling theory, to think this man who has shared my bed, my life, might be capable of that.
Serena composes herself. “So I’m here to warn you.
You’re living with a dangerous man, Iris.
I don’t know for sure what happened, but I do know that Alice was scared of him when she died.
Really scared. She didn’t know what he was going to do to her if he found out about the affair.
So yeah,” she finishes, an anticlimax after that explosive reveal.
“I just came here to say that. If he could do it to her, then I have no doubt he could do it to you, too.”
The implication that I’m somehow lesser than Alice isn’t lost on me, and, even despite everything she has just told me, I feel a prickle of anger.
To disguise my irritation, I lean forward so my hair falls in front of my face, and as I do so the necklace becomes dislodged from the neck of my sweater.
Serena sits up straighter. “What’s that?” Urgent, scared, even. “Is that Alice’s? Her necklace with the ‘A’ on it?” She grabs for it. I hate it when people get into my personal space without asking, but I’ll allow it. Just this once.
“Is this hers?” she says loudly. Too loudly.
I nod. “Yes.”
“Where did you get it?” She’s practically hyperventilating now.
I stare at her. “Jack gave it to me.”
“Fucking hell,” she whispers. “I knew it. He was fucking there. I’ve looked at that picture she sent me a million times, and she was definitely wearing it. I just thought it had come free in the water. She was wearing that on the day she died.”