Epilogue
JILL FINDS IT hard to bear. She envies Ted that he does not.
After their interrogation at the police station, Jill had shut herself up in the brownstone, afraid to leave the house.
She knew Ted was worried about what Lara might do.
But Jill had secretly decided that if Lara told the truth, Jill would back her up as long as they offered her a deal.
After a couple of difficult days of not hearing anything, Jill snuck upstairs to the second floor and called Lara.
‘Hi,’ Jill said when Lara picked up the phone.
‘What do you want?’
Jill swallowed and said, ‘What did you say to the police?’
‘Nothing.’
Jill didn’t know whether to be relieved or disappointed. She didn’t say anything at all for a long moment.
‘I told you before – I don’t think you’re to blame for Ben’s death,’ Lara said. She paused and added, ‘I think Ted was behind all of it.’
Lara waited, as if waiting for her to confirm it for her, that she wasn’t responsible for what happened to Greg either. But the moment passed, and still Jill said nothing.
‘I only wanted to protect you,’ Lara said, and abruptly hung up.
Jill told Ted the good news.
A few days later Jill saw a notice in the paper that Lara had given birth to a little girl. Jill felt strangely sad and left out, even though she had no interest in children. She sent an expensive gift for the baby, with a card, but got no reply.
Jill lost her job, dismissed from the gallery she loved. She has no friends any more, won’t be hosting any more fabulous parties, won’t be welcome in the art world. Her dreams of having her own gallery one day – will that ever happen now? Will people ever be willing to deal with her?
When she tells Ted this he says, ‘Fuck them. Buy all the art you want and hang it here. We can afford it. Who cares what they think?’
Soon after the news broke and was taken up in a frenzy by the media, her cleaning lady had shown up at their door unexpectedly and given her notice.
Nadya said that she couldn’t work for them any longer under the circumstances, that she had her reputation and her own feelings to consider.
Nadya had seemed almost furious at her. This, Jill felt, was almost the worst of all.
To be judged, to be shunned, by her cleaning lady.
She wondered if she’d ever be able to find another one.
One morning, Ted had looked up at her at the breakfast table and said, ‘We could try to make Min pay for this.’
‘How?’
‘It might be possible, with help from law enforcement, to trace who sent those texts. We could do it now. We have nothing to lose.’ He leaned toward her with a gleam in his eyes. ‘We could send Min and Robert to prison – for breaking and entering, eavesdropping, blackmail.’
For a brief time, the possibility of it had united them. But when Ted approached the police, they’d refused to help.
All Jill has left now, besides more money than she will ever need, is Ted.
And she finds that sometimes she can hardly bear to look at him.
They continue to live in the house they used to love, but the joy has gone out of it.
The joy has gone out of everything. They avoid the front room altogether now.
Tonight Jill is sitting up in bed beside Ted, pretending to read, but instead thinking about all they have been through, what they have lost. Unexpectedly, her phone buzzes on her bedside table.
She picks it up, sees that the call is from Min, and shows the screen to Ted.
His expression hardens and he mouths to her to put it on speaker. She does.
‘Min,’ she says.
‘Well, well,’ Min says, her voice icy. ‘So I was right all along.’
Jill can think of nothing to say in return.
‘I got Ted’s message,’ Min continues. ‘You can tell him I’m not the one who planted the cameras, if that’s what he thinks.
Robert and I have been in Africa – we weren’t even in the country when those recordings were sent to the papers.
’ She adds, full of spite, ‘But I always knew the two of you murdered Greg. And yes, I’m happy that everyone knows it.
Have a nice life.’ She hangs up abruptly.
Jill drops the phone on the bed and turns to Ted. ‘If it wasn’t Min, who the hell was it?’ she asks, her voice rising.
Ted looks at her blankly. ‘I don’t know.’
She can’t take any more of this. Her heart is pounding from Min’s call, her breathing rapid. She can feel the hysteria returning in a sickening wave. Her phone pings on the bed. She picks it up and looks at the text.
YOU’LL NEVER KNOW. AND I’M STILL WATCHING.
NICE PYJAMAS BY THE WAY.
Nadya stares at the screen of the smartphone, the burner phone on the bed beside her. That felt good.
There were no millions for her and Peter, no new beginnings, no champagne. She still hasn’t recovered from the disappointment. It had never occurred to her, during all those long months, that the Westcotts would not pay. That they would choose to face the music.
What music? she thinks bitterly. They have all that money, she has none, and she doesn’t think they care that much what people think.
Rich people are all the same – there are different rules for them.
She doesn’t understand how they can confess to murder and still not go to jail.
Some technicality, and a good lawyer, saved them.
Recently a tabloid had approached Nadya for an exclusive about what it was like being the cleaning lady for the notorious Westcotts.
But the money offered wasn’t enough to change her life, not enough for her to leave and start over somewhere else.
And if she left New York, she knew that her son wouldn’t come with her.
No, she was stuck here, cleaning houses for rich people, and if she’d spoken to the tabloids, she would have lost all her wealthy clients. No one likes a tattletale.
But at least she doesn’t have to clean up after the Westcotts any more. She wouldn’t be able to stomach that. And Peter respects her now; he’d even asked her, the other day, what trade she thought he might be good at. They’d talked about finding him an apprenticeship. So things were looking up.
Konstantin had given the smartphone with the live camera feeds – and his burner phone – to Peter, but he’d lost interest and given the phones to her. So now she is the one watching the Westcotts – it’s like her own personal reality TV show to enjoy at the end of the day.
She watches Jill drop her cell phone onto the duvet as if it has burned her. Nadya smiles as Jill and Ted get out of bed and start to look frantically around their beautiful bedroom for the hidden camera.
She hopes they don’t find it. But she knows the batteries will run out eventually.