I want to weep and rage and cheer at her strength.
‘And that was when I knew she meant it. She was going to tell, no matter how bad it made her look, no matter whether anyone believed her,’ Sam says. ‘And even if they couldn’t prove it, there would be people who would never look at me the same way again. That would have been it for me, Louise.’ His voice breaks, tears threatening. ‘It would have been the defining event of my life, always and forever the boy who was accused of rape. I couldn’t let her do that to me, Louise, couldn’t let her ruin the rest of my life. You see that, don’t you?’
I am so used to believing him, so used to seeing him through his eyes rather than mine, that I am almost sucked in, lulled by his version of himself: the innocent victim, falsely accused, terribly wronged. But he’s telling me this at the wrong time. If he’d told me years ago, before he cheated on me and left me and our son, when I was still under his spell, I might have believed him, felt sorry for him. I might even have understood. But I have seen unbearable pain in a mother’s eyes, and a golden heart on a slender chain. I have taken off my blindfold.
‘I had no choice; you have to believe me. I couldn’t have her going around saying these things about me. I had to… had to make her… be quiet.’
Oh, Maria, forgive me. I think of Bridget, the pain of what she thinks happened to Maria etched on her face. Finding out the truth will finish her. But, of course, I realise as I look at Sam next to me, she’ll probably never find out. I think of Sophie’s broken body. I know what happens to people who know too much about Sam.
‘It took a long time, longer than I thought.’ His voice is small, and again I am reminded of Henry confessing to a childish crime – stealing sweets from the cupboard or breaking an ornament he wasn’t supposed to touch. ‘But in the end she was quiet. I couldn’t leave her there, so I decided to try and get her over to the edge of the cliff. It had started to rain by then and she kept sliding out of my arms – I was shaking so much, and she was so heavy. But I managed to get her there in the end, and lay her down on the grass. I was crying by now, Louise, really sobbing, so I nearly didn’t see.’
He stops and takes a swig of wine, the glass slipping between his fingers, his face covered with a light sheen of sweat.
‘As I knelt beside her, I saw something that nearly changed the whole thing: her eyelids flickered. She was still alive.’
Ice floods my veins. He had been given a second chance, and even then he had not taken it.
‘I looked out to sea and thought about the rest of my life, and what it would be like if I stopped now, ran back up to the hall, called an ambulance. It would be OK at first, I could say I’d found her like that – I’d be the hero. For a while. But then I thought of her face as she spat at me; when she woke up, I knew that the first thing she would say would be that lie again: rapist.’
I clutch the sides of my chair. All the years we spent together, our wedding day, the heartache of IVF, the joy of having a child, it’s all been swept away. I had thought that him leaving was the worst thing he could do to me: ruining everything, wiping away all our previous happiness, sullying my memories of our time together. How wrong I was.
‘I could see her necklace glittering in the moonlight, winking up at me. I had this idea that it could identify her, if they found her body much later, that it would still be there, around the… the bones of her neck…’ His voice peters out and he covers his eyes with his fingers, rubbing them as if trying to erase the memory.
‘So I took it off and put it in my pocket,’ he continues, his eyes still hidden.
My God, Sam has had Maria’s necklace ever since. Where did he keep it? I shiver at the thought of it, that I could have come across it by accident at any time, clearing out a drawer or rummaging at the back of the wardrobe.
‘And then I… pushed her over. She… I couldn’t see very well, but I heard the splash as she hit the water. Then she was gone.’
The tides must have been his friend that night. Maria’s still out there somewhere, just bones now, or what’s left of bones when they’ve been in the sea for all that time. My God, I let her down so badly.
He looks up, eyes pleading.
‘I couldn’t have people thinking those things about me, could I, Louise? I don’t know if anyone would have believed her, but mud sticks, doesn’t it? I couldn’t go through the rest of my life as the one who was accused of rape. Nobody would ever have looked at me in the same way again.’
I think back to that night: I remember speaking to Sophie, to Esther; I remember Bridget arriving, the revelation that Maria was missing. But what I realise now is that Sam wasn’t there. He wasn’t there when I was dancing, oblivious to everything except the beat of the music and the chemicals surging through my bloodstream; he wasn’t there when the lights came up; he wasn’t outside as Mr Jenkins took Bridget to the office to call the police. No, he was weaving his way through the woods, through the rain, sodden and mud-soaked; running through Sharne Bay, keeping to the back streets, until he reached the safety of that little house on Coombe Road; he was taking off his clothes and shoving them into a bin bag; he was showering until the brown water streaming off him ran clear.
Sam reaches out and strokes my hair, entwining the strands around his fingers, a chilling reminder of our previous intimacy. I sit motionless in my chair, desperately trying to order my thoughts.
‘But… Nathan Drinkwater… why…?’
‘I had to find out who was sending those Facebook messages. Sophie called me after you went to her flat, told me about the friend request from Maria, and your visit to her flat. Why didn’t you come to me, confide in me?’
I shrug as if I’m not sure, but I know why. I was trying to make sure his strong fingers couldn’t reach into my life any more. I didn’t want him to assume the role of confidante, take charge of my life again. I wanted to deal with it on my own.