Chapter Thirty-Three
LARA RUBS LOTION into her hands while her husband sits beside her in bed, glasses on, reading the latest issue of The Atlantic.
She has a book to read, the new Lisa Jewell, but she can’t stop thinking about Jill and Ted and what might have happened on that boat.
She remembers Jill’s odd behaviour this morning, her reaction when Lara brought up Ramirez.
He deeply unnerves Jill, that much is clear.
And today, as much as she was trying to hide it, it was clear something was bothering her.
She turns to her husband. ‘Ben, remember when that Ramirez guy from the Coast Guard was here?’
He looks up from his magazine. ‘Yes. Why?’
‘I can’t stop thinking about it.’
‘You should. It was an accident.’
‘But Jill has been … different lately.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘She’s not her usual self.’
‘They experienced a traumatic event. And now, with the inheritance – and all the attention on them – their lives have been disrupted. She’ll settle down.’
‘No, it’s more than that,’ Lara insists. ‘I’m worried about her. Today she seemed almost … frightened.’
‘Frightened?’ he repeats.
‘I could see it in her eyes. The way they darted all over the place when I was speaking to her. I was over there today, and she could hardly focus on what I was saying. I was telling her how we’re trying for a baby.’
He smiles. ‘Well, you know how uninterested Jill is in babies.’
‘I know. But … she just seemed scared. And Ramirez – why isn’t he letting it go? What was he doing at the memorial yesterday?’
He puts the magazine down on the bed. ‘What are you getting at, Lara?’
‘Jill seemed really rattled to see him there.’ She adds uneasily, ‘I’m worried about them.’
‘Well, you don’t need to be. They didn’t do anything wrong. They’re not that kind of people.’
But Lara’s not so sure.
Ted has to figure out what to do about John Burnley.
But he is distracted by his wife, who is visibly agitated.
He needs her to calm down so that he can think.
John has evidence. John is a real problem.
He must deal with him soon, and he needs to figure out how to do it, and how to get away with it.
But he can’t think with Jill in such a state.
She’s pacing back and forth in their bedroom, wringing her hands, her face a mask of distress.
Perhaps a change of scene would do them both good.
Away from here, where they found the hidden cameras, away from John Burnley.
Jill would calm down, and he would be able to come up with a plan.
He’s given himself a week to figure out how to deal with that bastard.
That’s not much time. He needs a clear head.
He watches Jill pace and reflects that perhaps she is not really cut out to be a murderer after all. ‘Why don’t we go away?’ he suggests.
She stops and turns to look at him, seems tempted. ‘Can we?’
‘There’s nothing keeping us here. We’re allowed to travel. You can take a few days off work, can’t you? And we could put all this out of our minds for a few days, regroup.’
‘Maybe we should,’ she says. ‘I can get the time off.’
‘How about Venice?’ he suggests. They both love Venice.
It’s where they went for their honeymoon.
That seems so long ago now. They almost seem like different people.
Perhaps they can recapture what they had then.
They will take a private gondola ride down the Grand Canal, visit the Guggenheim; he’ll take her to Florian’s – she loves Florian’s.
They will have romantic meals. He’ll buy her something nice.
And the art will distract her; Venice has so much art.
He can think about how to get rid of John Burnley while they spend hours walking quietly through galleries.
She doesn’t have to know what he’s thinking about.
‘Sure, Venice,’ she agrees.
He fetches his laptop off the desk in the bedroom and climbs back into bed and turns it on. He starts looking at flights to Venice, and possible hotels. ‘How about going back to the Gritti Palace?’
‘Yes,’ she says. But she seems distracted.
He spends some time making the bookings, hoping that getting away will do her good. That it will do them both good. And then they will come back, and he will deal with this problem once and for all.
Jill is wide awake again. She has been wakened by a dream, and now she sits up gasping for breath.
She was drowning. She was in the sea, that same stormy sea, being tossed around by the waves, struggling to survive, and then something was pulling her down below the surface.
A hand was grasping her leg, and she tried to kick free.
She opened her eyes wide underwater and tried to fight off her attacker.
It was Greg – but Greg ravaged by death and time in the water.
There was seaweed in his hair, and holes where his eyes used to be; his skin fell in tatters from his skull and floated like ribbons in the water.
And just as she was about to open her mouth to scream and let all that water in to drown her, she saw that it wasn’t Greg any more, but Ramirez.
And he was alive, and smiling at her, his eyes wide open in the water, as he held her down beneath the surface, waiting for her to die.
She’s panting, trying to push the dream out of her mind. She glances down at her husband, snoring loudly. She can’t stay here beside him any longer.
Now she is wandering around the house in the dark.
There is no moonlight coming through the skylight tonight, so she uses the flashlight on her cell phone to light her way up and then down the elegant staircase.
The solidity, the grandeur, of her house is no longer a comfort.
She is terrified of being arrested – could her dream have been any clearer?
Her stoicism has left her, her courage has fled.
She is like Lady Macbeth, so changed; from the wife urging her husband on to murder, to the lost woman seeing blood on her hands that she can’t wash out.
Jill doesn’t see blood on her hands, although it’s there; no, she keeps seeing the tiny glinting eye of that camera in the bookshelf that captured their confessions.