Chapter 65
AMBER
The sound comes again and I twist round, squinting into the dazzling glare of the sun.
For a moment, all I can see is the white wall of the lighthouse and the heat shimmering above the path.
Then a figure steps into view.
Simone.
Her hair is loose around her shoulders, and sunglasses hide her eyes. The last time I saw Simone, she was admitting to Dominic that she was framing me for her husband’s murder. Now she’s claiming she wants to help me. It makes no sense…
‘You got my note,’ she says, her voice clipped.
I nod.
‘What’s wrong? Cat got your tongue?’
‘No.’ I drag the word out.
‘The police didn’t see you leave the villa?’
‘No. I went out the back and climbed down to Villa Olympus from the terrace.’
‘Good.’ She nods.
‘Why are we here, Simone? You said you could help me. How?’
‘When I said I could help, I might not have been telling the whole truth.’ Her lips curve, and dread twists inside me.
‘What d’you mean?’
‘Dominic saw you on the balcony last night. I don’t know what you think you heard, but I’m here to tell you you’re wrong.’
I stand a little taller. ‘I’ll tell you what I heard. You killed Felix. You asked Dominic to help you cover it up, and you dropped my amber necklace by his body to frame me for his murder.’
‘When you say it like that, it sounds so… calculating.’ She laughs, but there’s no humour in her voice. ‘It was an accident. He came at me. What was I supposed to do, take it?’
‘No, but you didn’t need to kill him!’
‘Sit,’ she orders.
‘What?’
‘Sit down.’ She motions to the stone steps. I do as she says and she sits a little way away from me, her chin cupped in her hands, her elbows on her knees.
‘D’you know, when I first met Felix I thought all my wishes had come true.
He was clever, successful and rich. So fucking rich.
Yes, he was a bit rough round the edges, but I knew I could smooth them out.
God knows I’ve had enough practice.’ She laughs drily, then her expression clouds over.
‘What I didn’t realise is that Felix is incapable of monogamy. It isn’t in his genetic make-up.’
She looks at me, one eyebrow raised as if she can sense my disbelief.
‘I know, it’s bullshit. If he wanted to be faithful he would’ve been.
He just didn’t want to. I spent the first couple of years of our marriage blissfully unaware.
Then I walked into his office one day when he thought I was out of town and found his secretary giving him a blowjob behind the desk.
Such a fucking cliché. He promised it would never happen again and bought me a Gucci handbag.
‘A year or so went by before I caught him at it again. He’d told me he was going on a golfing weekend with clients.
When he got back I found a receipt for a spa hotel in his jacket pocket.
I began to lose count after that. Interns, waitresses, the wives of colleagues, women he met on Tinder. He even had a fling with his ex-wife.’
‘So why didn’t you leave? You’ve got your own career. You don’t need his money.’
‘D’you know how much a corporate lawyer earns, Amber? I make one-forty a year. Of course, it’ll more than double when I make partner, but at the moment it’s barely enough to get by.’
I almost choke. She thinks ￡140,000 is barely enough to live on? My basic salary at Cavity Wall Solutions is ￡18,000 a year. That’s barely enough to get by. What planet is she on?
‘You’d have been legally entitled to half of Felix’s money, wouldn’t you?’
‘And there’s the rub. The answer is, not if we divorced. He had me sign a prenup after Willow’s mother took him to the cleaners.’
‘So you won’t get anything?’ For someone so money-orientated she doesn’t seem too concerned. ‘What if he dies?’
Simone smiles slowly, as if I’ve finally caught up with her superior intellect. ‘If he dies, everything is split down the middle. Willow gets one half, I get the other.’
‘How much is that?’
‘Frankly, it’s none of your business.’
‘Enough to kill him?’ I study her face, struck once again by her supreme confidence. No, not confidence. Arrogance. Her poise. That patrician sneer. The unshakeable belief that she’s right and the rest of us are wrong. All of it the product of a pampered, privileged upbringing.
Her voice hardens. ‘I told you, he came at me. I was just trying to defend myself.’
‘You smashed him over the head with the bust of Athena!’
‘I confronted him about hitting on you and he saw red. He had his hands round my neck and I grabbed the nearest thing to hand. It was pure instinct.’ She stares out to sea.
‘When he fell to the ground I thought I’d knocked him out, but then he didn’t get up and when I checked, he wasn’t breathing.
Dom wanted to call the police, of course.
Good old Dom. Straight as a die. So awfully honourable,’ she mocks.
‘But there was no fucking way. I’m glad to say he eventually came round to my way of thinking. ’
I almost don’t want to know the answer but I ask anyway. ‘He helped you clean up and hide Felix’s body?’
‘You think I would have managed to haul the fat bastard into a wheelbarrow and push him down to the building site on my own?’ She inspects her scarlet nails.
It would be the ultimate study of casual indifference if it wasn’t for the tiniest tremble of her elegant fingers. The sight of it gives me courage.
‘You left my amber necklace next to his body. You framed me!’
‘You were the perfect scapegoat. Everyone saw Felix come on to you. If you’d just told the police he pawed you and you hit him in self-defence, they’d have believed you.’
Panic lodges in my chest. ‘Why are you talking about me in the past tense?’
She smirks. ‘Am I?’
Suddenly she’s on her feet, laughing, backing around the side of the lighthouse towards the cliffs.
I follow, blood pounding in my ears.