Chapter 29
Chapter Twenty-Nine
ISLA
The phone buzzes in the dark like an angry wasp.
I’m wrapped around Kit, his arm heavy across my waist, his breath warm against my neck. We’re tangled together in the white room that doesn’t feel white anymore – his leg hooked over mine, my hand resting on his chest, feeling the steady thump of his heart.
We’d been gentle with each other tonight. Slow. Moving through his heartbreak with careful hands and softer words. Not trying to fix anything. Just … being. Together.
He’d fallen asleep mid-sentence, exhausted, finally peaceful. The first time since they pulled him from the water that he hasn’t thrashed awake shouting Peter’s name.
The phone buzzes again.
I should ignore it. Should let it ring out, switch it off, bury it under a pillow and pretend the world outside this room doesn’t exist.
But Kit stirs slightly, makes a sound low in his throat. He needs this sleep. Deserves it.
The screen lights up again and I make a grab for it.
PIPER CALLING.
My stomach drops.
Piper wouldn’t call at two in the morning unless someone was dead. Unless something catastrophic had happened.
Unless—
A chill floods up my spine, ice water through my veins.
I slip out from under Kit’s arm as carefully as I can, trying not to wake him. He mumbles something, reaches for me in his sleep. I press a kiss to his shoulder, tuck the duvet around him, and grab the phone.
The screen’s still lit. Still ringing.
I pad out into the hallway, the floorboards cold under my bare feet. Down the squeaky stairs – Christ, I’d forgotten how loud they are – through the dark living room to the kitchen.
My thumb hovers over the answer button.
Two seventeen in the morning.
Nothing good happens at two seventeen in the morning.
I answer – heart a jackhammer in my chest.
‘Piper?’
‘Isla. Thank fuck.’ Her voice is tight, wound up, wrong. ‘I’ve been trying to reach you for three hours.’
‘I was asleep, my phone was on silent and I didn’t hear it vibrating—’ I stop. Doesn’t matter what I was doing. ‘What’s wrong?’
Silence. The kind that’s heavier than words.
‘Piper. What. Is. Wrong.’
‘There are photos of you.’ Her voice cracks. ‘Richard had a call from a rag newspaper asking if we had any comments to make.’
The kitchen tilts.
‘What photos?’
But I know. God, I know.
‘Did you know about them, Isla? They’re everywhere.
Twitter. Instagram. The Daily Mail ran them an hour ago with the headline ‘Isla Quinn: The Truth Behind the Lies’.
Marcus’s team put out a statement saying you were a willing participant in your relationship, that the photos prove it, that you’re lying about—’
I stop hearing the words. There’s a roaring in my ears like the sea.
Those photos.
The ones he took when I was drunk, and possibly something else.
Something dark and dirty that I’ve never owned up to, even to myself.
The ones he took the night I’ve tried so hard to forget, because in the morning all I could remember were hazy recollections that made fear twist my stomach.
My head had been fuzzy, the stale taste of champagne on my tongue, but also another taste, bitter, denser.
All I could remember was being unable to stand, and Marcus had been laughing as I’d said no and he’d said Just one more, just for us, you look so beautiful and I’d been too tired, too scared, too fucking broken to fight anymore.
After that everything had been black. Just a dark expanse where memories should have been.
The next morning he’d shown me the photos. The ones where I look … complicit. Willing. Like I wanted it.
Like I was fucking loving it. And he’d said, There you go, Isla, everyone will know you’re mine now.
‘Isla? Isla, are you there?’
‘I’m here.’ My voice sounds far away. Flat.
‘We need to respond. Immediately. Richard is drafting a statement but…’ Piper hauls in the most unprofessional shaky breath I’ve ever heard her take. ‘What the hell do we say? These images, they undermine everything. They show you as willing.’
‘No.’ My voice is a croaked break. ‘No, they don’t. I never was.’
‘Why the hell didn’t you tell me, why didn’t you tell Richard when we brought him on board to save your career? The man who’s supposed to be spinning this story into something positive? Instead you haven’t even spoken to him. Isla Quinn, people can’t help you if you don’t let them in.’
I can’t answer. The wound is too deep, too sore. Lethal in how far the puncture wound goes.
‘Isla. You’ve got to let me help you, but you’ve got to tell me the truth. Your career has crashed because you chose to support Jemima Collins. You publicly agreed to be a witness in support of her case against Marcus Vale. This could ruin her too—’
‘What do they show?’ I cut her off. ‘The photos. What do they show?’
Another silence.
‘Isla—’
‘Tell me.’
‘You’re … you’re topless in most of them. There’s one of you in his bed. One in the shower. One where you’re…’ She trails off. ‘They’re intimate. Very intimate. And you’re smiling in some of them, Isla. You look happy. You look—’
‘Drugged,’ I finish. ‘I look drugged because I was drugged. But no one’s going to see that, are they? They’re going to see what he wants them to see. That I wanted it. That I’m lying.’
‘You were drugged?’ There’s a hollowness to her words.
I let silence lap between us.
‘Fuck, Isla. Why the hell haven’t you told anyone? We can prove—’
‘We can’t prove anything!’ My words are loud. Bullets firing into the peace that I foolishly believed I could have here. I clap a hand over my mouth, glance at the ceiling. Listening for movement upstairs. Kit stirring.
Nothing.
‘Isla.’ Piper’s voice softens. And that makes it worse. Piper is sharp edges and game plans. If she’s softening, it makes this moment real. ‘Come back to London. We’ll handle this together. We’ll—’
‘Maisie’s going to see them.’ The realisation hits like a fist to the gut. ‘She’s eight years old and she’s going to see me naked. Her friends at school are going to see me naked. They’re going to show her. They’re going to—’
Oh God.
Oh God oh God oh God.
‘Kit’s going to see them.’ My voice breaks.
‘The whole village. Everyone who was at the pub tonight singing for Peter. Everyone who’s been kind to me, who’s accepted me back, who’s…
Nina gave me a hug tonight, Piper. Dot gave me a jam strainer to make Maggie’s fucking jam.
They’ve let me in and now they’re going to see me like that and think—’
‘They’ll understand. Kit will understand. He knows what Marcus is, what he did to you—’
‘Will he?’ I laugh, sharp and bitter. ‘Because I haven’t actually told him anything. I haven’t told anyone the truth. Not all of it. Not the worst of it. I’ve been too much of a fucking coward to tell anyone the truth. Not even you.’
The roaring in my ears is getting louder. My hands are shaking. The kitchen walls are pressing in.
I can’t breathe.
‘Isla, listen to me—’
‘I have to go.’
‘Isla—’
‘I have to go, Piper. I need to – I need to think. I need to—’
I hang up.
The phone buzzes immediately. Piper calling back.
I switch it off. Stand there in Kit’s dark kitchen, wearing his T-shirt, feet bare on his cold floor, and try to remember how to breathe.
In. Out. In. Out.
But all I can see are those photos. My body. My face. Smiling like I meant it. Like I wanted it. Like I didn’t die inside with every click of the camera.
And Maisie. Eight years old with her French plaits and her starfish drawings and her absolute trust that I would stay.
Maisie’s going to see those photos.
The village is going to see those photos.
Kit’s going to see those photos.
And I can’t – I can’t face them. Can’t watch their faces change when they realise what I am. What I let happen. Can’t see the pity in their eyes, or worse, the judgement.
You said no but you smiled for the camera.
You said you were a victim but you look pretty willing to me.
You’re not really a victim at all, are you? You’re just a liar trying to ruin a good man’s career.
My phone’s still in my hand. Still switched off.
I turn it back on. Wait for it to boot and then dial Piper.
She answers on the first ring. ‘Isla, please—’
‘Send a car.’ My voice is steady now. Flat. Decided. ‘I’m coming back to London.’
‘Okay. Good. That’s good. I’ll—’
‘Now, Piper. Send it now.’
A pause. ‘Isla. Talk to Kit first. Tell him what’s happening. I don’t think you should just—’
‘Send the car, Piper.’
I hang up again.
Switch the phone off again.
And stand in the dark kitchen of the man I love, in the village that finally feels like home, and know with absolute certainty that I’m about to run.
Again.
And I won’t come back.
I didn’t come back the last time because I didn’t want the people I loved to see the damage that had been done to me. Now they will know that for fact.
I won’t be coming back.
Not ever again.
The car ride to London is silent. Just me and the Samsonite and a driver listening to Radio 4.
The taxi doesn’t smell of onions.
He doesn’t ask if I’m that Isla Quinn.
My heart, I think, is broken.
I left Salt Cottage as I found it. Apart from the roof, which is in better state now – thanks to Kit.
Her recipe folder I put back in the sideboard.
It will be like I was never there at all.
I hope they can all forget me again, just like they did before. Once the second wave of scandal has died down, they’ll all forget who Isla Quinn was. They’ll mourn that wonderful man Peter. Sea Salt Bay will continue its sleepy idyllic existence.
My fingers shake as I turn the key in the lock to my Hampstead conversion. The air that hits me as I open the door chills me to my core.
Home.
Home sweet home.