The glass through the letterbox and the fire; these things they would have had to piece together between them, one awful truth propelling them along to the next. But it would have been a volcanic conversation, re-routed by tears and cross-purposes. It’s possible they never got that far. Possible, but not probable.
Rising up the escalator at Turnpike Lane, I taste my neighbourhood, petrol and garlic, but this familiar air does not offer its usual welcome. Is there a chance I could style it out, as Juno would say? Laura is used to the idea of Beth as unreliable and dangerous; why shouldn’t her story about sex with me be one more lie? It’s not like Beth can prove it, all these years later. I haven’t got a weird birthmark or anything they can use to identify me. Unless there’s some other way they can compare notes, maybe something I do that other men don’t, or something other men do that I don’t? I feel sick thinking about the members of this tiny club discussing the thing only they have in common.
I touch out with my Oyster and on the beep realise something so obvious that it stops me in my tracks, and the jaws of the barrier trap my rucksack. It’s a measure of how stressed I am that I don’t even think about my camera equipment inside as I heave myself forward to wrestle the bag free. The crucial point I have overlooked is this: Beth has truth on her side. Beth has always had truth on her side.
I step out across Green Lanes, almost into the path of a red double-decker. The breaks squeal, the exhaust belches and I would almost welcome its impact. Ignoring the bus driver’s shouts and the motorists’ horns that blare in discord, I walk on, wondering how any of this ever seemed so deeply necessary. I think about the man I used to be, work spiralling out of control, a twin brother intent on his own destruction, all the other pressures that made my drastic solution seem like the only one.
On Duckett’s Common teenage boys are playing basketball, the ball hitting the asphalt with that distinctive echoing bounce that’s redolent of some Bronx recreation ground. In the playground toddlers play with dads who look a lot like me, and I take heart; my twins inside Laura feel like an insurance policy on my marriage. Those babies are half mine; they are half me. She won’t want them growing up with only one parent, not after all she’s been through. Our children are the reason we will get over it. But to get over it we have to go through it.
My pulse notches up with every single step I take. I turn into the corner of Wilbraham Road and stand on the opposite pavement, so that I can see, at a diagonal, our rooftop with its encroaching exoskeleton from next door’s scaffolding. The skylight’s open, telling me Laura’s at home.
I make one last attempt to call her, to gauge what I’m walking into. The phone rings and rings, muffled and deep inside the house. Laura always has her phone with her and I’ve never seen her refuse to answer it when she knows the caller. I am in deeper shit than I have ever been before. With utter certainty I know that I can’t face her. Or, not yet. Not without a little fortification.
In the Salisbury, I sit at a high table, order a neat double vodka and knock it back. It doesn’t touch the sides, so I order a pint and hope that in the time it takes me to drink it, my palms will stop sweating, inspiration will strike, or, if I’m really lucky, a meteor will land on the pub and I’ll never have to go home again.
Chapter 60
LAURA
21 March 2015
‘Look, I know this isn’t easy for either of you.’ Jamie’s coaxing, reasonable tone is at fatal odds with the knife in his fist. ‘Trust me, I don’t want to go digging over old ground any more than you do. But people have believed your story for long enough. Don’t you think? It’s time my name was cleared.’
‘Jamie, you know what happened,’ says Beth. With that, Jamie loosens his grip on the shaft, just for a second; long enough for the knife to drop a millimetre downwards. It tears a two-inch slit in my T-shirt and makes a single thorn-prick of blood on my belly, at the highest point of my bump. I can’t help the scream that comes out, but at Jamie’s harsh, ‘Shush!’ I do manage to stifle it; still, I feel that scream like a moth in my mouth. Write it, I telegraph to Beth. Write whatever he tells you to, and the more extreme the better. Every lie he forces you to write is more ammunition for having him put away for life.
If we get out of this alive, says a little voice inside me.
The cut isn’t deep; it’s just a score on the surface. The blood and the position on the crown of my belly make it look worse than it feels. I’m far more worried about the blow to my head. My ears are still ringing.
The cloth of my T-shirt catches the droplet of blood, and as it’s absorbed it appears to bloom, sudden and fast, like a time-lapse video of a poppy going from bud to full flower. It’s this spreading stain that seems to decide Beth. She picks up the pen and squares off the paper before her, then looks levelly at Jamie.
‘Why don’t you tell me what really happened,’ she says, in the deadest of voices. Her tone doesn’t seem to register with Jamie, who smiles. When he clears his throat, I feel the vibration in the tip of the knife.
‘On the tenth of August, 1999, I travelled alone,’ he lingers on the word to wring meaning from it, ‘to a music festival on Lizard Point, Cornwall, held to coincide with a total eclipse of the sun. There was a free and easy atmosphere at the festival.’ He pauses again, not for effect this time, but to let Beth’s pen catch up with his dictation. ‘On the second evening, around a campfire, I struck up a conversation with Jamie Balcombe, who was also travelling alone. We hit it off immediately.’ It’s the voice he used in court, that expensive education undegraded by prison.