Chapter 37 #2
The question was so direct it pulled Estella up short.
I know you lie to me, Ellie had told her; and honestly, what a thing to say.
Of course Estella lied to her! The truth was the last thing Estella really owned.
Maybe, when it came down to it, it was the only thing she owned.
Ellie was using her and she was using Ellie.
And yet, those bruises; Ellie in her arms last night, finally sleeping peacefully because Estella was there with her; that hand on her thigh.
“Yeah,” she said finally. “I think Alison would too though if you want to ask her for the story.”
“I want to hear it from you,” Ellie said.
And so, Estella sighed. She told Ellie, truly, about the first time she’d met Simon Hartmann as a lawyer: his kindness, his goodness, his patience.
She told him about the first time she’d met his wife.
So exquisitely beautiful, poised, successful, the mother of his child.
The jealousy that had kicked in. The way she’d imagined somehow getting to have what Alison had, so sure that it was her husband that allowed her to move through the world with such confidence and security.
Estella wanted to live like that, to be anyone but the person her own husband treated her as.
Only as it turned out, the chase and being chased…
that was all it was. Simon Hartmann was a bigger piece of shit than Mike, in his own way.
And so Estella had neatly ruined Alison’s life, only to find that all her poise and confidence had been despite Simon all along.
Alison rose above her circumstances and her marriage, while Estella sunk amongst hers.
All she’d managed to do was wreck her own life along the way, for nothing but a lousy mirage of a man, sealing her own fate as she did it.
She glossed over that part — telling Ellie Graham all she’d endured from Mike when the affair came out felt like she’d be sullying them both — but if Ellie noticed she didn’t push.
“When I realised that Mike had despatched Devo to kill Alison I couldn’t let it happen,” she said.
She didn’t tell Ellie her part in the plan, how she’d wheedled and pushed and plotted and set it all in motion.
She really hadn’t meant for some of it to happen, she really hadn’t.
But that was Mike: a fucking hand grenade in a knife fight.
She also didn’t tell her that derailing Devo meant that Kenneth had shot him in the head.
She just told her the bare bones, the part that made her look good, really, when she thought about it.
Saving Alison, saving her girlfriend. “Alison had been living in fear for years,” she said.
“I knew that was my fault, ultimately. If I hadn’t gone for Simon, he’d never have been on Mike’s radar in the first place, and neither would Alison.
I gave her the heads up that day, that I was taking over and that she was going to be safe. ”
Ellie was perfectly still, her eyes on the garden.
“You told her that Mike was going to die,” she said.
Estella’s heart pounded in her ears. She couldn’t deny it, or what that admission revealed. There was no point, because Alison would tell Ellie anyway, and it was the truth.
“Yes.”
The word seemed to make the flowers droop, or at least that’s the way it felt to Estella. She could feel the tear she couldn’t stop sliding down her cheek and running down her throat. She waited for Ellie to take her hand off her thigh, because, after all, Estella Grant was a murderer.
“I already knew that,” Ellie admitted after a few minutes of silence.
“Alison told me about it this morning before you got up.” Estella wasn’t sure what she was supposed to say to that.
Somehow Ellie still hadn’t taken her hand off her thigh, and Estella had the urge to pick it up and fling it off her, to get it over with.
“Then why are you here?” Estella could hear her voice breaking and she hated it. How on earth had things gotten this fucked up? She should be an island right now, not spilling the worst of her truths to a pretty actress who she had shared a bed with. What the hell was happening?
“Alison said that you showed up, saved them both from a bullet, then spilled the fact that Mike would be killed. She said that neither she nor Hope had said a word about it, didn’t call the police or even tell them about it after the fact, so they were as good as guilty too. Accessories, in fact.”
Estella’s ears were ringing. She shook her head, scrunching her eyes closed.
She lifted her head and glared out at the flowerbeds.
She’d sort of known this glaring fact, but not known it at the same time.
She’d known Alison would see the trade she’d made, known Alison was a woman of honour.
She hadn’t known that Alison would believe herself complicit.
Ellie took a breath beside her. She squeezed Estella’s thigh then loosened her grip.
Estella could feel that her legs were shaking.
Why? Ellie kept going. Her voice seemed to be coming from far away.
“Alison said that you killed your abuser. That you endured years of torment from a violent man. That as a family lawyer she knew that the courts still didn’t understand the difference between the abuser and the abused when a woman finally hits back.
She said she let you kill him to protect yourself, but ultimately, to protect herself and her son as well.
She said that if you’re a killer, then she’s one too. ”
Estella erupted up and off the porch step to get away from Ellie.
She marched blindly through the garden, frantically blocking branches and leaves with her arms to keep them whipping her face, needing to move, to get away from her words, to figure out how the hell she was supposed to cope with her worst truths being spoken to her from that mouth, from this woman who kept seeing her, whether she wanted to be seen or not.
Because Ellie Graham did not just call Estella a fucking victim, and she could not align herself with Estella like she was some misunderstood waif.
Because even if Alison’s assessment was accurate, the deeper truth was that Estella was so very much worse than all that.
Estella was shaking, knees weak, hyperventilating, breaking down, head spinning, choking, and these fucking trees went forever and how big was this garden and how did she get out, she was going to be sick and—
“Breathe, honey—” Ellie was there and Estella had to be alone, had to get away, but her knees collapsed and she was sitting in the fucking dirt and Ellie was holding her tightly.
“Breathe with me,” Ellie said, her voice so calm that somehow Estella could grab hold of it, even though she couldn’t get air in, couldn’t breathe.
“I’ve got you,” Ellie said, “honey, I’ve got you.
” And then Estella was breathing ragged breaths and those breaths were sobs and Ellie was holding her and she wasn’t letting go.
“Where are we?” Estella managed, at least nineteen hours later, when she had finally stopped heaving and crying, scrubbing her sticky face dry.
“In a dahlia patch I believe,” Ellie said gravely and Estella found herself laughing.
She and Ellie were sitting in the dirt, surrounded in tall leafy flowers — not dahlias but foxgloves, in fact — like two incredibly fucked up garden fairies.
She could see nothing except green leaves, pink, blue and purple flowers towering above their heads, and Ellie Graham.
“I can’t talk about this again,” Estella said, sucking in a long deep breath. “Please don’t make me. Just know… what Alison said, I’m even worse than she thinks.”
“Okay,” said Ellie. She squeezed Estella’s hand. “I believe you.”
“Wow, that was fast,” Estella said wryly.
“I think you’re telling me the truth,” Ellie said simply.
Estella sighed. She felt drained and sick and a little bit like she was hanging by a thread. And yet still Ellie didn’t seem to want to leave her side.
“Why are you here?” She needed to know. “Like what are you getting out of this? Outside of method acting, which by the way you don’t need me to fuck you to be able to do.”
Ellie leaned back on her elbows in the garden, almost disappearing back into the flower bed.
“I wanted you to fuck me because you’re hot as hell and we have ferocious chemistry,” she said. “And that’s the honest truth.”
“Great decision making, Eloise Silver,” Estella said. Ellie smiled. Then she looked contemplative.
“I’m here because you’re under my skin. Because I always seem to want to know you more.
Because I’m not stupid and I know you’re dangerous, but you always make me feel safe.
” Ellie sat up and half-turned to her. “I don’t fucking know, Estella, I don’t have any good answer for you.
You fascinate me, you turn me on, you make me laugh…
why does anyone want to be around anyone?
I like everything better when you’re there and I don’t know why, but I look at you and I always just… want you closer.”
Estella was stunned into silence.
“There’s no future here,” she stated the blinding fucking obvious.
“I know.”
They both sat staring at each other. Ellie was bruised, Estella was tearstained, they both were marked with streaks of dirt from the flowerbed.
“I’m going to kiss you,” Ellie said softly, and just like that, she did.
Ellie knew who she was but somehow she wasn’t running scared, nor was she seeming inclined to judge her, which— should Estella be judging her for that?
But Ellie’s mouth was soft and warm, and Estella kissed her for the comfort of it, kissed her for the tenderness she craved, kissed her because she was sorry, kissed her like it could keep them both safe, hidden away in the foxgloves forever.
Finally, they stumbled out, weak-kneed, unreasonably aroused, dirt-smudged, tear-stained, equally confused as the other. They held hands as they navigated up the grassy lawn, this time between the flowerbeds and not through them, and walked up toward the house.
“Oh jesus,” said Harry as he watched them arrive.
“Don’t look my love, you’ll have a conniption.
” He clapped one hand over Hugo’s eyes, where they both sat at the outdoor table under a sun umbrella, cups of coffee and eggs on toast. “But then again, what’s a beautiful summer’s morning in Gold Hill without lesbians fucking in the flowerbeds now, let’s be honest. Do you want some eggs, darlings? ”