Chapter 38
THIRTY-EIGHT
JACK
Jack was crouching to sweep up the glass from the floor when he heard Kara come back after making sure Lina was ‘safely’ in the annexe.
As if it was her who needed keeping safe.
It was Evie who needed to be kept safe. Lina was influencing her.
Kara, too. Turning her against him. She’d avoided eye contact with him as she’d helped the older woman to the door.
Lina was playing traumatised and frail masterfully.
His gut twisted as he considered the damage she was causing.
Discarding the dustpan and brush as Kara came through to the lounge, he straightened up.
‘I assume Evie’s chosen to stay with her?
’ he asked, though he knew the answer. He’d seen from the frightened confusion in his daughter’s eyes that she didn’t know who to believe, and that almost ripped his heart from inside him.
Pressing a hand to her forehead, Kara answered with a tired nod.
Jack took a breath, then, ‘You know I didn’t do this, right?’ he ventured cautiously.
Still not looking at him, she didn’t respond, confirming that she didn’t know anything of the sort.
‘She’s dangerous, Kara,’ he warned her, willing her to believe him. ‘Surely you must see that now?’
She met his gaze finally, guardedly. ‘Strange, that,’ she said. ‘That’s exactly what Lina is trying to convince me you are.’
Jack felt his jaw tense. Working to quash the anger building inside him, he tried to think of something he could say that would convince her that what had happened here wasn’t how it seemed.
‘Why did you do it?’ Kara asked suddenly. ‘In what world do you imagine anything could excuse violence?’ She stared at him with a mixture of fury and disillusionment.
Jack felt his heart sink. There was nothing he could say, was there?
Lina had planted the seeds of doubt deep.
The Oscar-worthy performance he’d witnessed when he’d walked back in after leaving precisely because he didn’t trust himself to be alone with the woman had made sure they took root. ‘You believe her story then?’ he asked.
Kara looked at him in astonishment. ‘She’s injured,’ she pointed out, as if he wasn’t aware of this fact, Lina plainly having gone to great melodramatic lengths to make it obvious, smearing blood across her cheek, backing away from him in feigned horror once she had her audience.
‘It’s self-inflicted.’ He kneaded his forehead wearily. ‘But I don’t suppose you think she’s capable of that any more than she is of lying through her teeth?’
Kara said nothing. The look in her eyes, though, one of bewildered disbelief, spoke volumes.
‘Maybe she fell, I don’t know,’ he added, with an exasperated sigh. ‘What I do know is that it’s all theatricals and nothing to do with me. I’d already left, for Christ’s sake. She knocked on the door, walked straight in as I opened it, and I walked out before I…’
‘…lost your temper?’ Kara finished, as he trailed off. ‘So are you saying she smashed the whisky bottle?’ she asked, her tone now cynical at best.
Jack answered with a defeated shrug. There seemed little point in defending himself since he appeared to have been tried in his absence and judged guilty.
‘As in threw it across the room?’ she went on more stridently. ‘Which presumably she must have done, judging by the whisky dripping down the wall and the splintered glass all over the floor?’
‘I wasn’t here, Kara,’ he repeated forcefully. ‘I have no idea—’
‘Why are you drinking so much?’ she demanded, taking him completely aback.
‘You have to be kidding?’ He eyed her incredulously. ‘You think I did this because I was drunk?’
She didn’t answer, appraising him carefully instead.
Jack squinted hard at her. She did, didn’t she?
Jesus. ‘I had one drink,’ he said, growing scared.
He was going to lose her, lose everything because of a meddling woman who, whether demented or just plain bloody evil, was determined to make damn sure he did.
‘Just one,’ he reiterated, fury tightening inside him.
‘And I had that because, quite frankly, I needed it.’
‘To take the edge off your anger?’ Kara suggested.
‘Yes!’ he answered sharply and immediately regretted it when he saw her flinch. ‘Look, Kara, can we just please stop this? It’s what she wants, don’t you see? For us to be at each other’s throats. For you not to trust me.’ He moved towards her, but she only took a step away from him.
‘How long before one drink leads to two?’ she asked. ‘And then another, and another?’
‘Kara, please don’t do this,’ he begged. ‘I don’t drink to excess, you know I don’t.’ He tried again to move towards her, wanting to hold her, to somehow reconnect with her and make this madness stop. She only backed further away, just as his daughter had – and Jack felt sick to his soul.
‘How long have you had a drink problem?’ she asked.
‘Because you clearly do, and you’ve been keeping it hidden from me.
What about the affair you didn’t have?’ she went on before he could speak.
‘You said Natalia was the one who cheated, that her injuries were a result of unsavoury relationships. Were they?’
‘Yes. I told you, she—’
‘Are you telling me the truth, Jack?’ She spoke over him. ‘About anything?’
And there it was, the life he’d tried to make disintegrating before him. He didn’t speak. He couldn’t trust himself to. Instead, he pinched the bridge of his nose hard, took stock for a moment, and then walked quietly past her.
‘Where are you going?’ Kara asked, spinning around as he collected his jacket and car keys from the table by the front door.
‘The office,’ he said, swiping a hand across his cheeks. ‘I have paperwork to catch up on. I think we might both need some space, don’t you?’