I thought constantly about how I would issue the ultimatum to Laura, knowing that I never could. I was scared of the answer. I kept mentally replaying Laura’s words: you’re acting like it’s an either/or situation. She had never denied it. The only way Laura would let Beth go would be if Beth herself pushed her away. And that was never going to happen.
There was a glimmer of hope when Beth gave us the photograph. Even as I stared at it, panic rising inside me, I thought: Laura’s going to head for the hills after this. It was a lapse in self-censorship I couldn’t have planned better myself. I thought, surely Laura won’t tolerate this. If anything, I was braced for the confrontation, worried that this would be the explosion where Beth, suddenly realising she was on the verge of losing Laura anyway, blurted the truth. But the confrontation never came. Instead of being horrified at Beth’s voyeurism, Laura was actually charmed by the picture. I’d got used to keeping myself under control, but even then I was surprised by the restraint I showed that day, agreeing with Laura as she said it was beautiful. I remember that she had her hair tied back that day and I grabbed it so tightly that if it had been any other part of her body she would have screamed in pain.
With Beth’s guard so far dropped that this seemed acceptable, there was no predicting what she might do, what she might say, next. This was both my greatest fear and my motivation. I hit my tipping point the day she let slip about hitching down to Lizard Point.
‘Do you have any idea,’ Beth had said, ‘what it’s like, spending all this time with you both and having to constantly bite my tongue?’
Laura blanched; she must have picked up on my own secret terror. After Beth flounced out, I walked to the balcony, gripping the railings for balance.
‘Where’s she gone?’ said Laura, when we both heard the street door slam.
Beth crossed the road away from the common, towards the Tube. ‘On to the common, through the trees,’ I said.
I waited till Laura had gone, then pocketed my wallet and took the stairs so fast it felt like flight. The traffic was against me, London motorists not wanting to give up their ten-second spurt of movement between two red lights.
I wasted valuable seconds feeding my Travelcard into the slot. By the time I was underground, Beth was on the platform, the sulphurous backdraught from an incoming train sending her scarf flying. I caught up with her as the doors opened, and grabbed her by the upper arm, soft flesh turning to iron with the shock of unexpected touch. It was the first bodily contact we’d had since that night in Cornwall.
‘Wait,’ I panted. ‘Please, wait with me.’ With a slight forward motion she tested my grip against her strength, then slackened in defeat.
We stood there in the diesel slipstream of the train as it pulled out for Edgware. For a moment we were the only people on the slender platform. The pit of the sunken train tracks gaped invitingly before us. It would be so easy to—
‘Do you know how it feels lying to Laura?’ she broke into my thoughts. ‘Of course you do.’
She let me lead her back to the bench. When I sat down, we were both shaking.
‘If she knew about us, it’d only make it worse,’ I said. ‘And we’ve kept it up for so long, now. It’s not like it just happened yesterday. You’ve been lying to her your whole friendship. You’d break her heart if you told her. You don’t want to do that any more than I do.’
‘It’s just so hard, living a lie. I didn’t understand how exhausting it would be.’
‘Beth. Are you threatening to tell her?’
A train blew in. She boarded without answering me. From the doors she said, ‘I really don’t know how you do it.’
Was that a threat? I didn’t know. I knew only that we couldn’t see her again. It was all too close to the surface now. The countdown to my destruction had been activated. I saw it in my mind’s eye, red digits on a black display spinning backwards towards zero, just as time had ticked forwards at the trial. This was no longer a case of me trusting Beth to keep quiet. It was about removing ourselves from the situation, or losing Laura for ever.
I watched so many trains depart without boarding that a guard from upstairs came down to see if I was all right. I think he thought I was contemplating suicide. I think he might have been right.
That evening was the first time I cried in front of Laura; really cried, really lost it. She couldn’t hide her horror in time. If I didn’t do something, if I didn’t think of a way out soon, her sympathy would turn to contempt and I would lose her anyway.
My eureka moment came at last when Laura was asleep and that lone candle flickered on and on. Tight with anger at the trap I’d made for us all, I wanted to pick up the candle and hurl it across the room in frustration, and that’s when the idea came to me. All my life people had told me I had no imagination, but the idea for the broken glass was as vivid, sudden, and seemingly as little to do with me as an image downloading on to a computer screen.
In my defence, it never seemed reasonable, only necessary, and if I could have thought of another way to extricate Laura from Beth’s clutches without hurting either of them, I would have done it. But I had not had a better idea. I had not had another idea. That buzzing neon light of stress had finally started to melt my brain. When Laura was asleep, I went downstairs, smashed the glass on the pavement outside, then carefully posted it through the letterbox. Laura would surely draw parallels between this and Beth’s attack on the car and, if she didn’t, there was enough now for me to guide her to that conclusion.