When I walk into the kitchen, Leon’s standing there barefoot, tending the pot on the stove. “You OK?” he asks, when I go straight to the fridge for wine. He looks like the same man, sounds like the same man, but everything’s different.
“We need to talk,” I say, going to the cupboard to get a wineglass. “Do you want one?”
He stops stirring and looks at me, no doubt trying to gauge the seriousness of what I’m about to say.
“Do I need one?” he asks.
I take out two cut-glass goblets—a wedding gift from Leon’s parents—and start to pour the already open bottle of Sauvignon Blanc.
“Can you come and sit down?”
“Mmm, sounds ominous. Should I turn the pan down?”
I want to tell him to turn it off altogether as I can’t imagine either of us are going to have much of an appetite after this.
I nod and lead the way into the living room.
“So…?” he asks.
“You remember my client, Jacob Mackenzie?” My stomach lurches as he shrugs his shoulders nonchalantly.
“What about him?” he asks.
I swallow, wishing I could stop this conversation. “Well, he’s gone missing.”
There’s the tiniest intake of breath, but an onlooker would miss it. Tears teeter in my eyes as I wonder how far I’m going to have to push him to elicit a reaction.
“And the police seem to think that I’ve got something to do with it.”
“You’ve spoken to the police?”
“Yes, and they…” I start, unable to look at him. “They seem to think that we’ve been having an affair.”
He takes a deep breath, puts his hands on his hips, and fixes me with a glare so intense that it makes my skin prickle.
“And have you?” he asks, his voice icy.
“Of course not!”
The loaded silence permeates the air, its weight sitting heavily on my chest, as I wonder who’s going to be brave enough to speak next.
“So why is he living in our flat then?” he rasps, barely audible.
“How did you know?” I ask, while wanting to close my ears off to the answer.
He sighs. “I went round there a few days ago. Imagine my surprise when I let myself in to find someone else’s belongings filling the place.”
“I’m sorry,” I gasp. “I wanted to tell you, I should have told you, but I just couldn’t find the right time.”
“So, what’s been going on?” he asks, his eyes boring into mine.
“Nothing,” I cry. “Absolutely nothing.”
He walks away from me with his hands on his head.
“Have you … have you done something?” I ask, feeling braver now that he has his back to me.
He spins around. “Like what?” he asks, his tone accusatory.
“Leon, we need to be honest with each other,” I say, going toward him. “If we don’t figure this out, work through this together, then we’re going to be in a whole heap of trouble.”
He shrugs his shoulders.
“I saw you,” I say, swallowing hard. “At the Royal Garden hotel.”
His eyes widen and he starts pacing the living room floor.
“What have you done?” I plead. “You need to tell me.”
“I haven’t done anything.”
“You went to the flat. You saw us at the hotel. His credit card was found on-site here.” My voice is getting hoarser with every accusation. I imagine it’s the stone-cold fear setting in.
“Credit card?” he exclaims. “What credit card?”
“The one that guy announced over the microphone.”
Leon rummages in his pocket with a confused expression on his face. “This is … Michael Talbot’s credit card,” he says, looking at the thin piece of plastic in his hands.
I step away, knowing that being this close to a crucial piece of evidence will only incriminate me even more than I already am.
“That’s his real name,” I cry. “Apparently, his real name is Michael Talbot.”
“So how the hell…?” He shakes his head. “I mean, what is his credit card doing here, at Tattenhall?”
I search his face for any sign of him knowing more than he’s letting on, but there’s only utter confusion etched there.
“I honestly don’t know,” I say.
“So this is the guy you were in the hotel with,” he asks, holding the credit card in the air.
I nod.
“So why did you tell me you were at Shelley’s?” he snaps, as if suddenly remembering why this all started.
“Why didn’t you tell me you’d seen me?” I bite back.
“I didn’t know how to,” he says, his shoulders slumping. “I thought you were having an affair with him and was still working out what to do about it.”
“Why would you even think I’d do something like that?”
“Because he’s living in our flat,” he barks. “Though for some reason, you didn’t see the need to tell me. And then you’re in a hotel together…”
“We weren’t in a hotel together.” I sigh. “We were in a hotel bar.”
“Looking all cozy,” he says, bitterness still lingering in his voice.
“How did you even know I was there?” I ask.
“I followed you,” he says.
“But you were supposed to be in Birmingham…” I start, before it dawns on me. “Did you even go to Birmingham?”
He looks at the floor sheepishly.
“So there wasn’t an issue with the lanterns?”
He shakes his head. “I knew he was in the flat, I saw the way you were together in the house that morning, and I wanted to see what would happen if I wasn’t here. And, as I suspected, you went straight to the hotel the minute my back was turned.”
“He called me in a panic,” I say. “He told me his wife had found out where he was and he needed my help.”
“From what I could see, he looked like he wanted more than your help.”
“What did you see?” I ask, imagining it through his eyes. Though the eye of the CCTV was bad enough.
“He looked like a puppy dog,” he says, grimacing. “Drooling and pawing at you.”
“He was drunk,” I offer in Jacob’s defense. “And he had confused our professional relationship with being something more. But we’ve got a bigger problem than that.”
Leon looks at me with raised eyebrows.
“The police have emails,” I say.
“What kind of emails?” asks Leon, his voice thick with suspicion.
“They say they’re from me to him, but they’re not. I’ve never sent him an email, nor has he ever sent me one. They’re supposedly me proclaiming my love for him.”
The way Leon looks at me sends shivers down my spine.
“And threatening him when he doesn’t reciprocate,” I almost whisper.
An involuntary spasm pulsates in his jaw and he locks eyes with me.
“What the fuck is going on here, Naomi?”
“I honestly don’t know,” I cry. “I think someone’s setting me up.”
“Why would someone set you up?” he asks, his voice high-pitched. “Who would want to do that?”
You, my father, my sister, Jacob’s wife, I want to say, as I imagine them all circling above me like vultures waiting to pick the meat off my bones.
The very thought that the man I love more than anyone in the world might be capable of stabbing me in the back and twisting the knife to such a degree devastates me. It’s as if my heart is being ripped out of me by the very hand I trust the most.
I shudder, unable to comprehend what he might have done to Jacob, even though it would be the last thing I could possibly imagine him doing. But didn’t I think the same about my father?
“OK,” he says when I offer no response. “So the police have got nothing other than a bunch of fake emails, and anyone could have set those up to look like they were from you.”
He says it as if it’s as easy as that, and I can’t believe that we haven’t yet had the hardest part of this conversation.
I swallow hard. “They have doorbell footage as well.”
He looks at me, unblinking.
“I went round there the other night, when I was worried about him.”
“So you’ve visited him at the flat?” he asks incredulously, fixing me with a steely glare. “And you wonder why I don’t trust you.”
A sharp breath catches in my throat as the slight’s jagged edges make themselves felt.
There’s a distant ringing of a phone and I follow it to my bag on the back of the dining chair. It stops in the time it takes me to find it, but as I look at the screen, I see two missed calls from Anna.
“Oh my god, Anna!” I exclaim. “Has she been here? Have you seen her?”