Chapter 49 Now
Now
James’s arm around my shoulders looks protective, but his fingers are digging into flesh, muscles engaged to push me out the door.
I don’t want this. But James is strong. Has always been strong.
I try not to look at Emily’s face, distraught.
I try not to look at Ash’s face, appalled.
I know I look insane right now. I’m the madwoman in the attic, and James is my weary keeper.
But I want to yell at them, to scream that he isn’t some hard-done-by hero.
I want them to understand that he’s my captor, that he’s made me this way.
“Em, we weren’t done talking,” I say, throwing my voice over my shoulder as James pushes me down the short path to the pavement. “Maybe I could stay?”
She takes a decisive step forward. “Of course.” She taps James on the back, harder than polite. “She should stay. When we finish catching up, she can sleep in our spare room.”
He doesn’t stop. “I’m so sorry, but she needs to come home,” he says. “She has a lot going on right now.”
Emily falters. “I just think maybe she should stay if she doesn’t want to go—”
“Look, you seem like really nice people, but I’ve not met you once, so I imagine you have no clue what you’re dealing with here.”
He’s making me sound crazy. “You’re making me sound crazy!” I hate how shrill and unanchored my voice sounds. I watch Emily back away again, consider how many years we’ve been apart. How much I might have changed in that time.
“She’s getting help. She’ll get better. I know this is…Sorry, I just…I’m doing my best. Sorry.”
And James keeps apologizing. Even as Emily follows us out to the car, my jacket in her hands.
Even as he pushes me into the passenger seat and fishes the keys out of my jacket pocket, gingerly handed over to him from Emily’s hands.
Even as I berate myself for letting this friendship go stale.
If she could be confident she still knew me, there’s no way she’d let him cart me away like this.
My breath is back in my mouth, and I know I’ve totally fucked this.
I’ve fucked this. Because until now, I’ve been a good little actress in front of James, but now I’ve blown my cover.
I look nervous, and I wouldn’t look nervous if I wasn’t suspicious of him.
He’s going to have questions. He’s going to know something is up.
And I don’t have any answers. And I need to be anywhere that isn’t right beside him right now.
In the heat of an argument, Chioma accidentally gets pushed to her death.
God knows what happens before Jade kills herself.
His partners have a habit of turning up dead.
His car door clicks shut. The ignition switches on. I try my door. It’s locked. How is it locked?
The child lock.
The engine revs.
Emily’s face is suddenly outside my window. “My number’s the same. Please text me tomorrow once you’ve slept. Let me know how you are,” she says.
“She’ll be fine.” James.
Emily is forced to take rapid steps back as the car begins to move out of its parking space.
We’re on the move, racing through the streets of South London.
James’s fury is felt in the speed of the car, throttling around turns.
I find myself wondering how he’s tracked me down and kick myself. He has my location on Maps. Idiot.
“What the hell is going on with you?” he manages to say. His voice is smooth and almost sweet, which would calm me if it didn’t feel like the sweetness of cyanide.
I don’t trust what my mouth will say, and so I say nothing.
“The silent treatment? Really, Natalie? What have I done to deserve this?”
He deserves a lot more than the silent treatment, but broken as I am, I’ve no idea how I’m going to get him what he deserves. I’ve made the mistake of thinking I’m someone I’m not again. This doesn’t work. None of it works.
“What?” James throws distrusting looks my way as the car hurtles down another road.
Did I say those last words aloud? I’m losing it. I’m really losing it.
“Natalie, for Christ’s sake!”
It’s so loud I nearly jump out of my skin.
He doesn’t apologize, simply keeps the car going, snaking up through West London, eventually joining the M4.
I think about texting Will, letting him know what’s happening.
Although how do I even describe what’s going on?
Hey, my husband’s driving me home…Then I catch the gleam from James’s jacket pocket.
My phone, not his. Is it worth snatching it out?
Worth the further suspicion this will raise? Not likely.
I stay very still. Perhaps if I’m perfectly still, I can disappear entirely. Perhaps all my problems will disappear entirely. But James’s rough driving won’t allow for this, each painful collision of my knee with the car door reminding me that I’m very much alive and here.
I’ve already built a picture of Chioma’s face in my mind.
Not that I have any details, really, but I can imagine her as clear as anything.
She has expressive dark eyes. A cheeky quirk to the way she moves her mouth when she speaks.
She’s someone who smiles a lot. Or smiled, I should say.
She has fine, dark braids. They’re 1B with a tiny bit of 24 mixed in, creating thin blond streaks.
Jade’s face also floats in and out of my mind’s eye as we continue to hurtle toward home, thick black liner and defiant stare.
I want to tell James to slow down, but I’m suddenly scared that even the lightest allusion to what I know will give me away.
And so I let myself be bounced around the passenger seat like a rag doll, waiting for us to arrive home.
And when we finally do, James wants to talk.
“Nat, what the hell is going on?”
He’s marching up the stairs behind me, our shoes discarded. I need to do better. He can’t know what I know.
“It was just a bad therapy session,” I say.
I make my way into the bathroom, quickly turn the lock in the door. We never usually lock the door when it’s just the two of us at home. James knocks.
“I need the toilet,” I say, which is true. An insistent stream sounds loudly through the bathroom to confirm this.
When I emerge, he’s waiting for me outside, arms folded.
“Talk to me, Natalie.”
“Not right now, James. I…I need to sleep. It’s late.”
“Yes, it’s late.” Vindication is so loud in his voice, it almost hurts to listen to. “So why are you turning up on people’s doorsteps? I was worried about you. And from the state of you, I had every right to be.”
I’ve mirrored James’s stance, my own arms crossed. I suppose I want to look as grown-up and sure of myself as he does, but I suddenly notice my right hand is shaking. I cup my rib cage with it to hide the tremor.
“I need to sleep,” I say.
“Baby…”
He reaches for me and I want to recoil, but I can’t.
He pulls me into his arms and I want to push him away, but I can’t.
He pulls my chin up, kisses my mouth, and I want to bite him like he bit me when we first kissed outside that bar, want to taste his blood, and I can’t.
I shouldn’t. But I could. Actually, I can, can’t I?
So I do. I can’t help myself. It’s instinctive.
A little revenge that pales against everything he’s done to me, but it feels good. Incredible, even.
He lets go, steps back.
“Ow, Nat. What the fuck?”
And I slip away from him while his mind is distracted, finger dabbing at his lip. His eyes are transfixed by the blood and I’m doubly glad for these necessary moments. With the gift of a few seconds’ time, I’m into the guest room, door pushed shut.
“Nat?”
But I’m already shoving the chest of drawers in front of the door.
The door opens a fraction before colliding with the solid wood.
Still, I know that if my weak arms could move the chest into place, James will be able to push the door open with a meaningful shove.
And it’s with this in mind that I’m already shunting the bed frame across the floor.
It groans as it scrapes against the wood.
“Jesus, Nat. What are you doing in there?”
He tries the door again, but he’s been too slow. The bed is already firmly against the chest of drawers, which is now more snugly against the doorframe.
“I need some space tonight, James.”
“Nat, this isn’t normal.”
“I need some space,” I say, already heaving the bedside table on top of the bed. It takes some effort, but I’m eventually able to get it on top of the chest of drawers. I bounce off the mattress and back to the floor.
“Nat, please…”
“Just…just give me the night, okay?”
One night to safety pin myself together. And then…And then…
I’m loath to lure myself back into the trap of thinking without foresight, but it’s all I can manage right now. If five minutes is too dangerously narrow a field of vision, then perhaps I can take things hour by hour for the time being.
A confused James acquiesces. “Okay, Natalie.” I can still hear him breathing on the other side of the door. “Are you going to sleep in there tonight?”
I nod and then realize he can’t see my nodding. “Yeah. I am.”
“Oh, Nat…”
And he sounds so sad that I can almost believe that he loves me, that this part of our relationship hasn’t been a lie. And maybe it hasn’t. But I can’t trust that feeling, and I can’t trust him, not when he’s made sport of misleading me.
“I’ll see you in the morning,” I manage to whisper.
The sound of footsteps against wood strike up and fade away. I hear our bedroom door click shut. Our bedroom. Soft sobs stretch from there to here, and it makes me want to cry, too. And I do, the wood smooth and cold beneath my feet.
I’m tired. So tired.
And I think of drawing the furniture away, of running to our marital bed and burying my face in his chest. I think of us holding each other, sobbing together, and it feels good.
Better than crying alone. Better than letting fear and distrust divide us.
Because after all, what do I really know for sure?
How far might I be letting Will manipulate me?
James has been so consistently kind, loving, and patient.
Can’t I just trust that? Can’t I just let him hold me, make everything okay?
Then I think of the lies he’s told about his dating history, the finsta, the convincing shock on Will’s face when he learned of my innocence, and it feels better to stay where I am.
I’m sure James is crying due more to his house of cards collapsing than our relationship being on the fritz.
Better than letting him get close to me again.
Better than risking my safety in his suspicion.
I go to close the curtains. If I want even a semblance of sleep, I’ll need to shut out the light.
Beneath the streetlamp across the road, a figure seems to stare up into my window.
The form is female, soft curves reading through the cinched waist of the big hooded coat.
Tight-coiled curls spring out to frame her face.
A face I can’t see. Claire. I know it’s just what I want to see, but it feels like she’s still looking out for me.
Keen to finish the big conversation that we never started. I turn back to the room.
The bed’s mattress looks inviting. I want to collapse onto it, but I eye the chest of drawers and fear that a shove of the door in the middle of the night could make it fall and crush me.
And so instead, I pull the duvet and the pillows from the bed.
Arrange them on the floor. I curl up there, alone and cold.
Sleep doesn’t come easy to me. My mind is too alive, too full of racing thoughts.
I think of distracting myself with some mindless scrolling and then remember that James still has my phone.
When drowsiness does come, it falls on me with a heaviness so deep and complete that when I wake, it’s with a gasp, as if I’ve been drowning and my face is just breaking water.
“Nat?”
I realize it’s James’s knuckles on the door that have woken me. His knuckles, and his pleading voice.
“Nat, I’m scared, and I don’t know what to do.
I called your therapist, asked for an emergency appointment if she could see you.
She’s booked you in for five p.m. I’ve told the office you’re sick again.
That I don’t know when you’ll be back in.
Molly started to crack Mad Mary jokes and I didn’t want that to become a thing that spread, so I’ve just told people it’s a bad chest infection.
Sorry if that was the wrong thing to do. ”
He’s certainly convincing. I can’t quite believe that he’ll just leave, mind trying to calculate if the blockade will really manage to keep him out. There’s a heavy lamp on the floor, dethroned from its previous perch on the bedside table. I scrabble over to it, weigh it up in my hands.
“Nat?”
My voice is small, still unpracticed after sleep. “I’m here. I heard you.”
“Will you go?”
I nod and then realize he can’t see my nodding. “I will, I promise.”
And I mean it. Am grateful, even. But I don’t leave the room until long after I hear the front door close. He must know I know something, and if I don’t act soon, I fear I will become another dead mark on James’s romantic scoreboard.