I spent the rest of the night knocking back one coffee after another in front of my laptop. I had all night to change my mind but the loss of reason that had come out of nowhere the night I met Beth now seemed to be an external force, guiding everything I did. Laura was, I’d noticed, newly in the habit of going down to the doormat in bare feet and, given that I was acting for her protection, I couldn’t let her be injured. I waited until ten o’clock to go downstairs. There was no post on the mat, only the sooty shards of glass I had posted through the letterbox the previous evening. I chose the longest one and set its point upright.
I closed my eyes, clenched my fists and stamped down as hard as I could, my punishment starting already.
Chapter 57
LAURA
21 March 2015
My elbows take the brunt of my fall. Two lightning forks of pain shoot up my arms and fuse at my shoulder blades. The bounce of my belly on the floor tiles is relatively soft, a sloshing inside me the worst of it. Too stunned to scream, I roll on to my side, to find myself eyeballing a pair of man’s deck shoes in brown leather. I let my gaze travel upwards. Red socks. Beige chinos. A flowery shirt with pinstripes at the collar and cuffs. His head is in silhouette underneath my hall light, fine hair in a thin aureole. I don’t need to see his face to know who he is.
‘It’s not what it looks like,’ says Jamie.
Does he know these are the exact words he used in Cornwall?
The three of us are frozen for a moment: me on the floor, him towering over me; Beth caught between us, her hair wild across her face and neck. I search Jamie for signs of intent. He looks the same, but different. Thicker around the neck and slacker around the eyes, like we all are. Prison hasn’t knocked any of the rich out of him but he’s softened by the wife-bought clothes.
‘Laura, I . . .’ begins Beth. The look Jamie darts her way has her scrambling to her feet just as, years ago, Antonia switched seats in court at his nod. The sickening thought occurs to me that they are somehow in this together. That all of yesterday – the notes, Antonia, the pub – was a convoluted trap. I should never have opened the door to her. I should never have come back.
‘Get out of my house,’ I say.
Jamie kicks the door behind him and reaches out with one hand to hook the chain in its catch. ‘Come on, sit up,’ he says, extending his hand. If you only had a recording of his voice to go by, you’d say he sounded concerned. I ignore his hand, put my palms on the floor and heave myself up into a sitting position, legs either side of my bump, hands checking for movement inside me. One baby kicks, then the other. My splintered joints aside, I feel . . . ok. Intact, physically at least. ‘All the way up, there you go.’ As I use the banister to pull myself up to my knees, there’s a flash of colour and I understand why Beth is doing what he says. The knife pressed close to her side is short in the handle but long in the blade, a gleaming steel mirror that catches the stained glass in my front door and throws kaleidoscope patterns on the walls. His hand is as steady as his voice as he says, ‘There you go, Laura. No harm done.’
Beth speaks to me in a whisper even though he’s closer to her than I am. ‘I’m so sorry, I don’t know what’s going on, he’s not supposed to be out, he—’
‘Let’s do this somewhere a bit more comfortable, shall we?’ says Jamie affably, looking around my house like he’s an estate agent sizing it up. ‘You should be comfortable in your condition. Where’s your kitchen table?’
Of course I can’t help my eyes travelling towards the little flight of stairs. He uses the tip of the blade to steer Beth away from the front door and down the hallway. ‘If you could just both make your way down there,’ he says, and then, ‘Your faces! Really, don’t worry! It’s just a bit of outstanding admin.’ His tone is the one he used at first on Lizard Point: matey and authoritative. Everything is fine as long as it’s under Jamie’s control. But if he could control himself, he wouldn’t be here. I have experienced how quickly Jamie Balcombe can flip between these two selves. The knowledge sharpens the knife.
I inch sideways along the wall, take the five steps down to the kitchen the same way, my phone behind my back, trying to guess on the virtual keypad where the nines might be. But I can’t even unlock it with my PIN, and anyway, Jamie’s on to me.
‘Thank you,’ he says, when all three of us are in the kitchen. He holds out his free palm like a primary school teacher confiscating some chewing gum. Instinctively my fingers grip the phone tighter. He prods the knife into Beth’s side. At her stifled yell, I throw it down on the kitchen table. Jamie places his own phone next to it; from the same pocket he produces Beth’s. He lines them all up on the Formica table, faces up, a row of glossy blank slabs. Mine looks old and battered next to Beth’s sleek, oversized handset and Jamie’s BlackBerry.
Does he mean to rape us? Does he mean to kill us?
I know this kitchen, I can find my way around it blindfolded. There is our block of knives, across the room and out of my reach. They are painfully visible but I also know that there’s a cleaver in the drawer behind me, and a mallet in the pot with all the wooden spoons. Holding the door open is an old-fashioned ten-pound weight that would double up as a cosh, if only I could bend down to retrieve it. There are all the murder weapons you could want in here and yet Jamie has the advantage. All it takes is one blade.