Chapter 71
SEVENTY-ONE
I wait for an agonising eternity in the designated waiting room.
Jack’s sitting in on the interview as Evie’s appropriate adult and I’ve been allowed no contact with either of them.
I’m terrified there might be other evidence we don’t know about.
I’m assuming they’ve found incriminating shoe prints, that they will endeavour to establish that the trainers that left them belong to Evie. How will she cope if they charge her?
I’m distracted by a text from Jemma asking me if we could meet up to talk.
Does she think it might be therapeutic? Anger writhes inside me as I recall how she’d held my hand, telling me that I deserved happiness, that Jack did too.
How she’d looked at me in astonishment when I’d asked whether she thought he might have cheated on Natalia.
He’s just not the type, she’d said. If he did, it certainly wasn’t with anyone local.
Bare-faced lies. Jack didn’t cheat on me.
He was involved with Jemma while he was with Natalia, but still I feel betrayed.
She should have told me. He should have.
I squeeze back the tears that are threatening.
We still have to have that painful conversation, assuming things aren’t overtaken by events.
If there’s the slightest hint of a lie then, though, it will be over between us.
There’s another child’s life at stake here, my baby’s energetic kicks remind me of that.
I will try to be there for Evie if she wants me to be, but I won’t put my baby’s welfare at risk.
Vaguely, I wonder how Lina is. I need to find her alternative accommodation. I’m not heartless; I will make sure to check on her, but I can’t give her all the help she’ll need, especially with my own future so uncertain.
My thoughts go to Natalia, the way she died.
She’d fallen twice, possibly pushed the first time and surviving against the odds only to die so tragically right in front of Evie’s eyes.
Evie had seemed possessed by such visceral anger she was like a different person, raging at her mother, calling her evil, yelling at her that she was the liar.
But when Natalia had reached beseechingly out to her, Evie’s mood had changed as if a switch had been flicked.
I ponder the genetic link both Natalia and Jack had spoken of, intimating that Evie’s mood swings were inherited.
Imogen had died from a fall. Could that really be a coincidence?
What had Natalia been going to tell me about Jack’s parents before the breath left her body?
I have to ask him. However traumatising his childhood must have been, he has to tell me everything. He must realise that.
I’m wondering how to broach the subject when he comes through the door.
His face is haggard, dark shadows under his eyes, in his eyes, and my heart wrenches for him.
I can’t help it. You can’t just unlove someone.
For all her rage, I believe Natalia still loved Jack.
That in a way, it was her love for him that fuelled her rage.
I believe that he had loved her too. If it turns out that he did push her from the clifftop, if any of what she said about him turns out to be true, what then?
‘Are they charging her?’ I ask, my heart stalling as I wait for him to answer.
He wipes a hand over his face. ‘It seems they don’t have enough evidence. There’s no camera covering the exact spot Imogen fell from, and the solicitor thinks that any transfer of fibres from Immy’s clothes to Evie’s wouldn’t stand up due to their close acquaintance, so…’
‘Thank God.’ My heart starts beating again. ‘What about the note? They initially thought it was suicide, didn’t they?’
Jack nods sadly. ‘It just said “I’m sorry”, apparently. They’re speculating as to whether she might have been interrupted while she was writing it.’
A note to whom? I wonder. Her mother? Evie? Why wouldn’t she have texted? Unless it was to someone she didn’t dare text for fear of being found out. I try hard not to let my mind linger on Jack. ‘What about the trainers, though?’ I ask. ‘They obviously wanted those for a reason.’
‘They found Nike trainers in the flat Natalia was staying in, after checking out your statement about the unfortunate landlord. Christ.’ Jack breathes in sharply.
‘How could she have done that? The man was a piece of shit, by all accounts, putting his tenants at risk, but to have left him just sitting there for the flies to feast on. Who in their right mind would do that?’
I don’t answer, glancing away instead as the pure primal fear I’d felt that day, the obnoxious odours come back to me, causing my stomach to heave.
Jack walks across to me. ‘I’m sorry,’ he says throatily. ‘That was tactless of me. Are you okay?’
I’m a long way from that, I want to tell him.
‘I will be,’ I assure him instead. I fought my way from the bottom of the darkest pit.
I will get through this. I don’t want to do it on my own, want desperately for him to make things all right, but if I have to, then so be it.
‘How’s Evie?’ I ask, partly to change the subject, partly because she’s my concern right now.
‘Not great,’ he says with a heavy sigh. ‘She’s going to need professional help to even begin to process any of this.’
‘But not from Jemma,’ I comment, unsure whether he even knows that I know.
‘Shit,’ he curses, his gaze hitting the floor. His eyes are filled with deep remorse as they come back to mine. ‘No,’ he says awkwardly, and hesitates. ‘I should have told you. I don’t know why I didn’t. I just…’ He stops as the door opens behind him.
‘Mr Conley, Evie’s good to go now,’ DI Blake says as she comes in. ‘We may need to speak to her again,’ she adds, ‘so if you could stay local.’
‘Hopefully not, if you do your job properly,’ Jack replies acerbically.
‘Far be it from me to give you parental advice, but you might want to park any grievances you have and concentrate on getting Evie the emotional help she’s obviously needed for some time.’ Giving him an arch look, DI Blake imparts her advice anyway.
A small tic goes in Jack’s cheek. I can sense his annoyance, but he doesn’t react, conceding the point with a short nod instead.
I can’t help but notice the flicker of guilt that crosses his face as he does.
I suspect he’s well aware that Evie needed help long before the tragedy in Antigua and the catastrophic chain of events that followed.