‘I’m so sorry, David. I hate myself.’ I need to tell him about the dreams. About how Adele spied on him. How she knew things. I need to be honest with him. I open my mouth to speak, but he’s in his flow and he cuts me off.
‘It’s not your fault. She plays her part well, and I was a drunk cheat. I should have never spoken to you in that bar. I just wanted … I just wanted to be happy. And God, I should have known.’ He almost slams his hand down on the table with frustration, but instead grips the edge of the wood. ‘I should have realised when she was little. That insane stuff she would say.’
‘What do you mean?’ I tense as I ask. It’s going to be about the dreams. I know it. She loved David. Of course she’d have tried to share it with him.
‘When we were first together we got drunk and she tried to tell me that she could do all this mad shit when she was sleeping. She was vague, but it sounded bonkers. Worse, it was probably my fault, because it sounded like she’d taken the ideas from the hippie book on dreaming I gave her and then made crazier stuff up. I just laughed and thought she was winding me up, but when she was upset that I didn’t believe her, I should have known that these fantasist ideas were leading to something. She was too old for them to have been childish imaginings. She was clearly showing signs of some serious disorders brewing. I mean, who could possibly believe that you could leave your body when you sleep? It’s the sort of thing people who’ve taken too much LSD say. So yeah, I should have seen the signs. At least remembered them when we got older.’ He looks at me. ‘It’s why I was so glad to meet you. You’re so normal.’ He grips my hands again as if I’m some lifeline. ‘You’re so grounded. Your nightmares are just nightmares, and you just get on with them. You would never believe in anything like that. You’re sane.’
Oh God, if only he knew. I can’t tell him now, can I? Actually, everything she told you is real. How else do you think she’s spying on you? I can’t do that to him. I can’t do that to me. Not now. Not when I still have to tell him about the letter I’ve sent to the police. He needs facts and reality. He can’t cope with anything else.
‘She’s certainly got problems.’ It’s all I can manage to say. ‘I’ll give her that.’
We hold each other’s hands tightly, and he stares at me. ‘You really do believe me, don’t you?’ he says, and I nod.
‘Yes. I believe you.’ It’s clear in my face anyway. I absolutely believe him. He didn’t kill Rob.
‘You have no idea how good that feels to hear. But I don’t know what to do. I’ve told her I want a divorce. Who knows what she’ll do now? She certainly won’t let me leave. And I’m worried what she’ll do to you. Jesus, this is all such a mess.’
And now it’s my turn to share my wrong thing. ‘It’s a worse mess than you think,’ I say. My heart is racing. ‘I’ve made it worse.’
‘I don’t see how it can be any worse,’ he says, with a soft smile. ‘If you can still like me after everything I’ve just told you, if you can believe me, then everything, for me at least, is already so much better.’ He looks better too. There’s more light in his eyes; a heavy load shrugged off, if only for a few moments.
And so I tell him. How I researched online and I sent the letter to Angus Wignall at Perth Police Station outlining all the reasons I thought Dr David Martin was involved with the death of a young man called Robert Dominic Hoyle, and how his body was probably still on Adele’s estate somewhere. It’s my turn to keep my eyes down on my coffee cup as my face burns. It’s not even as if Adele told me to do it. This is all my own stupid work. When I’m finished, I finally look up.
‘So you see, I have made it worse,’ I say. ‘Maybe they’ll ignore it as a crank letter. Maybe that Wignall won’t even see it.’ Oh please, please God let that be the case.
David leans back in the chair and lets out a sigh. ‘No, I think he’ll read it. He was like a terrier around me, trying to find some way to pin that fire on me.’
‘You must hate me,’ I say. I want the ground to open up and swallow me and never let me go. Why do I make everything worse? Why am I so impulsive?
‘Hate you?’ He sits up, his face somewhere between a frown and a laugh. ‘Have you listened to anything I’ve said? I don’t hate you. I … well, it’s more the opposite. I even like you for the way you believed in Adele. That urge to help her. It’s one I understand. But no, I don’t hate you for this. In many ways what you’ve done is a relief. It’s made things clear.’
‘What do you mean?’ He doesn’t hate me. Thank fuck for that. We are still together in this.
‘Adele doesn’t know about this letter you’ve sent?’ he asks.
I shake my head. ‘I don’t think so.’ I can’t really be more accurate. It’s hard to ascertain what Adele does or doesn’t know, but I can’t tell him that, not after what he’s just said. ‘What are you going to do?’