Chapter 66
SIXTY-SIX
NATALIA
Piercing pain shoots through the small of my back as I attempt to raise myself from the floor.
I try to move my legs. There’s nothing. No feeling at all.
Panic rips through me as I see the stark crimson stain blooming beneath me.
Evie. I glance up to see my daughter standing over me, her face tight with rage as she glares down at me.
The words she hurls at me are like icicles straight through my heart.
‘Dad thought you were sick! He tried to help you!’ she screams. ‘But you’re not sick.
You’re fucking evil. You drugged your own mother!
How could you do that? You’re the liar! It’s you who’s incapable of loving anyone. You ruin everything!’
‘Evie, please… don’t,’ I beg weakly.
She doesn’t respond. There’s nothing in her eyes but hostility.
Does she know what she’s done? Did she push me that day in Antigua?
I recall her visceral anger as she’d caught up with me.
She’d called me a cow, as if I were to blame for everything.
How could she know, with Jack playing the wounded soldier, that I’d encouraged the guy who was coming onto me out of desperation.
The same desperation that possessed me to have sex with a man who I learned, too late, despised women.
He bruised me, but it was Jack who broke me, making me question everything about myself, proving how much he despised me by having an affair with a woman who was supposed to be my friend as well as my counsellor.
A woman who’d clearly been conveying everything I confided, which he then used as ammunition against me.
I’d wanted to make him jealous. I wanted to goad him.
I wanted Evie to see him, who he really was, his cruelty and his manipulation.
On that day, he’d been at his cruellest, threatening to take her away from me.
I’d known as he stepped towards me, grabbing hold of my wrists, that I was in danger.
I could see the anger bordering on hatred in his eyes.
Even as I lost one of my sandals struggling helplessly to gain purchase, he wouldn’t let go of me.
I could feel the ground giving way, soil and loose rocks crumbling beneath me.
I remember him yelling at me, calling to Evie to stay back.
After that, nothing, until I found myself sinking deeper and deeper into the water.
That was when my will to survive kicked in and I determined I wouldn’t die, not there, not on that day, not in the way he wanted.
I would not give him the opportunity to play the grief-stricken husband after the ‘tragic accident’ that took away the mother of his child, which would attract gullible women like a magnet.
Swim! I told myself, thrashing in the direction I felt was upwards.
As the compression at the centre of my chest grew so heavy I felt my ribs would crack, I thought it was over.
That was when I saw it, light penetrating the water.
And I swam. With every last vestige of strength I possessed, I swam.
I’d expected the emergency services to come as I lay in the cove I’d crawled to like a sad stranded mermaid washed in from the sea.
No one came. Jack clearly hadn’t called them.
I realised that later when I read about the woman who’d committed suicide by jumping from a cruise liner.
I commented to Travis, the accommodating yacht owner, how sad it was that her shoe had been found washed up on a beach.
A beach some way away from the trail we’d walked.
The bag being found on top of the lifeboat made me laugh out loud.
How many women would leap to their death with their handbag over their shoulder?
He’d been thorough, I have to give him that, stuffing bits and bobs of make-up from the cabin inside it. The antipsychotics I’d been prescribed were a master stroke.
No, it wasn’t Evie. It can’t have been. ‘Evie…’ Needing to reassure her, I try again to reach out, but my body rebels, jerking violently, causing her to back away from me.
‘Mum?’ she says tearfully, as another spasm jolts through me, and I see the hostility in her eyes give way to bewilderment. Suddenly, she looks like a ten-year-old child, uncertain and utterly terrified.
‘It’s all right, sweetheart,’ I whisper, my heart fracturing for her.
‘Mum!’ Flying towards me, she drops to her knees. ‘I’m sorry,’ she sobs, shuffling closer, her jeans quickly soaked in my blood, her hands covered in it. ‘I didn’t mean to…’
Jack is by her side, his eyes wary as they meet mine. Is he wondering whether I will die this time? Hoping I will? I can’t tell. He turns his attention to Evie, easing her up and holding her close as she sobs into his shoulder.
He loves his daughter. I try to hold on to that. I know he does, despite my accusing him of being incapable of loving. ‘Help her, Jack,’ I plead. ‘Promise me you will.’
He answers with a small but determined nod and squeezes her closer, and I feel a huge weight lift from me as I think that finally he might get her the help she’s needed for a very long time.
I glance at Kara as she comes to him, placing a hand on his arm. I should hate her, yet I can’t. Perhaps she’s everything he needs. Everything I’m not. Someone sure enough of herself to be able to help him. I hope so. ‘Jack, you should take Evie to the kitchen,’ she says quietly. ‘The ambulance—’
‘We need to help her,’ Evie cries, pulling away from him.
‘Evie, no.’ Kara catches hold of her.
‘She’s fallen on the knife.’ Evie looks at her in disbelief. ‘She’s bleeding.’
Jack circles his arms around her. ‘We can’t move her,’ he says gently. ‘She may have damaged her spine.’
‘She’s bleeding to death!’ Evie shouts. ‘We have to stop it. We have to help her.’
‘Evie…’ I try to intervene, but I can’t make myself heard above the sudden cacophony of noise: Evie sobbing, Jack trying to subdue her, to hold on to her as she attempts to squirm away from him, the distant wail of a siren, plaintive, haunting.
Above it all, my mother’s voice, shrill and demanding. ‘Where is she? I need to see her.’
‘Kara’s with her, Lina,’ Jemma attempts to reassure her, as if she gives a damn if I die here. ‘There’s nothing you can do. Come into the kitchen with me and—’
‘She’s my daughter,’ my mother shrieks. ‘Now get out of my way!’
Seconds later, her odd-slippered feet come into view.
Her legs are mapped with blue veins. I hadn’t noticed that before.
Her ankles so swollen. I hadn’t meant to hurt her.
I feel a sharp pang of regret. I just wanted to keep her quiet until I’d done what I had to, exposed Jack and left with Evie. Now it seems I will never do either.
‘Oh, Natalia,’ my mother gasps. ‘What have you done?’ I smile inwardly at that. Is she concerned? I wonder. Or annoyed? ‘I should have stopped you,’ she says tremulously.
I’m alarmed as I realise she’s trying to crouch down to me, which she clearly can’t manage.
Then relieved as I see Kara at her side, taking hold of her arm, gently supporting her.
I was right about Kara. She has a caring soul.
‘Come away, Lina,’ she urges kindly. ‘The paramedics will be here soon. They’ll help her. ’
‘I should have stopped her.’ My mother turns to her, her face distraught. ‘I thought I could persuade her. She was so adamant about Jack, though. So determined. I thought that going along with her was the only way to make sure she didn’t take my Evie away.’
Her Evie? ‘You didn’t believe me?’ I ask, my voice strained.
My mother snaps her gaze back to me. ‘I didn’t know what to believe,’ she says, wringing her hands wretchedly.
‘You never did,’ I hiss. ‘You believed him. You blamed me for him leaving you.’
‘Derek? I did no such thing.’ My mother’s face is puzzled. ‘He didn’t leave me. I told him to go because of what he’d done to you. I told Jack when I came to see you, didn’t I, Jack? He wouldn’t let me in, even when I begged.’
I can’t see Jack. I see the perturbed frown that crosses Kara’s face, though. He’d told her about Lina’s visit, presumably. His version of the heated conversation between them, rather than my mother’s.
‘I supposed he couldn’t forgive me for the damage I’d caused you, but I wish he’d let me speak to you,’ my mother adds mournfully. ‘I wanted to explain. I should have insisted. I should never have let you go. I should have told you I believed you. I should have told you I loved you. Then maybe…’
Kara eases her close as a sob escapes her.
‘It’s too late now, isn’t it?’ My mother looks at her beseechingly.
I want to tell her it’s not. How ridiculously well timed her words are. I can feel my body beginning to shut down, my breaths becoming shallow. I’m so pathetically grateful, though, that I don’t have to leave this life believing that no one ever loved me.
‘She’s going to miss school again if she doesn’t come home soon,’ my mother says confusingly. Does she mean Evie? ‘Do you think she’ll phone?’ she asks Kara. ‘I’ve tried to find her to tell her Derek’s gone, but I don’t know where she is. Do you know?’
It’s me she means. Me she’s talking about. Me she cared about. My heart folds up inside me as I think of the years lost, filled with anger and bitter recrimination. The hurt I’ve caused her. All because of Jack. ‘Mum…’ I start, then stop as a sharp cough rattles my throat.
Kara exchanges glances with someone. Jemma, I realise, as she feeds my bewildered mother into her arms before dropping down to my side.
Taking hold of my hand, she smiles as if trying to reassure me. It’s a sad smile, a genuine smile, no malice behind it.
‘Come closer,’ I whisper.
She looks hesitant but does as I ask.
‘His parents… they…’ I stop, gagging violently as another cough racks through me.
Kara’s expression is alarmed as her face is speckled with rich red droplets of blood. ‘Natalia!’ she cries, pressing a hand to my cheek. I see the panic bordering on desperation in her eyes, and I wonder, is she desperate for me not to die? Or to hear what I have to say?