Nicky spins round to Charlotte and at that moment, one or two of the alarms stop; only one keeps up its mechanical wail.
Charlotte moves forward towards Nicky. She tries to pull Nicky’s arm, to move her from Cassie’s side, but Nicky corkscrews her arm away. It’s Nicky who leads, followed by Charlotte, back to my bedside. As Charlotte walks behind Nicky I see Charlotte’s face fall, from her held smile, livid and hard as a fist. Charlotte carefully closes my curtains before she comes to stand on the other side of my bed, opposite Nicky.
Thank god, Cassie’s safer.
‘What are you doing here?’ Charlotte asks, her voice thick, her question as uncompromising as a stabbing knife.
‘I had to lie to see her,’ Nicky says. ‘Jack wouldn’t let me visit, so I had no choice.’ Nicky pauses; her face crumples into a frown but her voice softens as she continues. ‘I’ve tried to be there for him, for the baby. I thought he’d need me now, now that he doesn’t have Cassie. But he won’t let me help him. He ignores me, just like Cassie did.’
Charlotte leans across the bed, towards Nicky. I can hear the effort it takes for her to keep her voice steady as she says, ‘Is that what you meant when you said it should have been you? You wanted to be with Jack?’
Nicky looks up at Charlotte. She shakes her head, and her eyes fall away from Charlotte’s face.
‘I never wanted any of this,’ Nicky says. ‘All I wanted was to make things right between us. She wouldn’t answer my calls, my texts. I saw no choice. I came down that night to make her talk to me.’
She was there that night.
Nicky keeps her arms locked by her side, occasionally flexing her hand open before balling it into a fist. She’s nervous and it’s obvious Charlotte can sense that.
‘You drove that night …’ Charlotte says, her voice strained.
In that moment, Nicky’s face is wiped clean, strangely naked of all expression as she realises what she’s said. She takes a step back, the corner of my bedside unit jars hard against her hip. It must have been painful, but she doesn’t wince.
‘You drove down that night, Nicky, but not to apologise to Cassie. You came to try and take my son away from his wife. When you saw Cassie with her bag on the lane, you saw an opportunity, you thought you could have what you’ve always wanted: Cassie’s life for yourself.’
It was her.
At last, Nicky’s face ruptures. She gasps, her breath too fast. She starts hyperventilating as she says, ‘No, no, no, no …’
I was right from the start.
But Charlotte talks over her. ‘It was you … it was you, Nicky. You tried to kill her!’
Nicky holds the side of her temples with both hands, her eyes wild and her voice becomes a long attenuated cry before she shouts, ‘I came to say sorry for what she saw!’
Charlotte stops talking suddenly, like she wasn’t expecting Nicky to say that. She keeps her eyes fixed on Nicky. Nicky’s breathing is becoming more frenzied; her chest beats like something inside her is trying to escape.
‘What did she see?’ Charlotte’s voice is clear.
‘She saw me and Jack.’ Nicky’s hands drop from her head, her voice fragile. ‘She saw us.’
I feel my sheets shift as Charlotte grips the top of my bed.
‘How do I know you’re not lying?’ Charlotte spits the word at Nicky.
‘She saw us together, Charlotte, back in the autumn. I was coming to stay for the weekend and arrived a couple of hours earlier than planned to surprise Cassie. Jack was home. I was glad to have some time with him. He’d had a bad day, left the office early. We were talking on the sofa. He was telling me how stressed he’d been at work, with the miscarriage, how he knew Cassie wasn’t happy and he didn’t know what to do. I don’t think either of us knew what was happening, but suddenly we were kissing and Cassie saw us. She was at the window. She saw us kissing.’
I watch as fine cracks spread across Charlotte’s face like fault lines. Her smile drops and her gaze flicks, sharp as a whip, across Nicky’s face, searching for a lie.
Charlotte suddenly moves, walks around the foot of my bed and comes to stand on the same side as Nicky. I think for a crazy moment that Charlotte might hit Nicky, there and then. The violence I saw in her the other night is back, like something has been released and won’t be caged again.
‘He isn’t … he isn’t like that.’ She talks quietly, but it sounds like she wants to scream. Her jaw snaps around her words.
Nicky just stares at Charlotte. Her hands ball into fists.
‘He is, Charlotte.’
‘You made him. You made him do it.’ Charlotte’s face twists ugly around her words,
‘I’m not blameless – I’m not saying I’m blameless – but I didn’t make him, Charlotte,’ she responds, before she adds weakly, ‘It was just a kiss.’
‘You say it was just a kiss? It’s never just a kiss.’
Nicky flinches as Charlotte comes closer to her.
Charlotte strains like a dog on a lead against herself. She looks like she could bite into Nicky’s neck. She points her hand violently towards the curtain, towards Cassie.
‘She wouldn’t have left him that night.’ Charlotte hisses the words through her teeth. ‘We wouldn’t be here now if it was just a kiss.’
Charlotte’s anger doesn’t have the rawness of a fresh rage. She doesn’t seem shocked by it; it is familiar to her, almost rehearsed, as though she’s practised similar scenes in her head late at night many times before, and finally, now, Nicky has given her a stage.
Nicky’s gaze drops to my bed, away from Charlotte. Her eyes pool; her sight must be blurred. The words come cleanly out of her, like they’ve been simmering under her skin for a long time.
‘I left a party just after midnight. Picked up my car and started driving. I was still too late by the time I got to the cottage. There was no one there. It was cold. The security lights flashed on outside. Ice had started to settle everywhere –’ she pauses, catches her breath and looks up at Charlotte ‘– but it hadn’t formed on Jack’s car. I put my hand on it. I knew he was there because he’d just been driving. His car was warm.’
Jack.
‘What are you saying?’
‘I tried to tell myself there would be a reason why his car was warm, tried to tell myself after Jonny was arrested that it was him, Jonny who hit her. Deep down I think I always knew it was Jack. I don’t think I was the first, I think there were other women before me. He didn’t want Cassie any more …’
‘Stop it. Nicky …’
‘He drove after her, didn’t he? I know it was him.’
Charlotte speaks slower than Nicky, her voice authoritative as she says, ‘I can call the police right now. They’ll watch the CCTV. They’ll see you driving down. You’d been drinking … you had a motive.’
Nicky lifts her hands to her head again, as though Charlotte’s words are needles pricking her ears.
‘You thought you could take him, but it hasn’t worked has it, Nicky? Look at you, still on your own …’