The Breakdown
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‘It’s easy to imagine how Jane must have felt when she
realised that the man she’d seen Rachel having sex with was the husband of the young woman sitting opposite her, her new friend,’ PC Lawson goes on. ‘Outraged on your behalf, she sent an email to Rachel, who was away in New York at the time. She reminded Rachel that she’d already broken up her best friend’s marriage and said she wasn’t going to let her do the same to you, especially as she was meant to be your best friend. She then threatened to tell you about their affair if she didn’t break it off with Matthew immediately. To get Jane off her back, Rachel promised to break things off with Matthew that evening. But Jane didn’t trust her and when she went back to the restaurant, after leaving her friend’s hen party, to use the phone there – she’d left her mobile at home – she not only phoned her husband but also Rachel. We have someone checking the records but it doesn’t actually matter because Rachel has already confirmed that when Jane confronted her in the car park earlier that day, she had demanded Rachel’s business card and had jotted her mobile number on the back.
Unfortunately, when we looked through Jane’s handbag, we found a whole assortment of business cards, most of them from people who worked at Finchlakers, so Rachel’s didn’t ring any alarm bells. Anyway, she asked Rachel if she’d broken things off with Matthew and when Rachel admitted that she hadn’t, saying that she needed more time, Jane told her that as she’d be passing
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by Nook’s Corner on her way home, she was going to stop off and tell you about their affair.’
‘What, at eleven o’clock at night?’ I say. ‘I doubt that she would have.’
‘You’re right, she probably only said it to threaten Rachel. Anyway, Rachel panicked. She told Jane that before she said anything to you, there were certain things she needed to be aware of, that she couldn’t just tell you brutally, hinting at your fragile state of mind.
She suggested that they meet in the lay-by and that once Jane had heard her out, if she still wanted to go ahead and tell you, they would do it together. Jane agreed to listen to what she had to say so Rachel drove to a track off Blackwater lane and ran to the lay-by on foot. And well, we all know the outcome. Rachel maintains that she had no intention of killing Jane, that she only took the knife to frighten her with. But Jane didn’t buy what Rachel told her about you having mental problems and they began arguing.’
Slowly, things fall into place. When I stopped in the lay-by on the night of the storm, Jane hadn’t needed my help because she was waiting for Rachel to arrive. She hadn’t known it was me in the car; if she had, she would have run to me through the rain, climbed in beside me and told me that, strangely enough, she’d been on the way to see me. And sitting in the car, she would have told me that Rachel and Matthew were having an affair.
Would I have driven straight to the house, taking Jane with me, to confront Matthew, passing Rachel’s car on The Breakdown
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the way? Or would she have arrived as I was trying to
come to terms with the devastating news, and killed us both? It’s something I will never know.
‘I can’t believe it,’ I mumble numbly. ‘I still can’t believe that Rachel would do such a thing. Even if Jane had told me, so what? Their affair would have been out in the open and Rachel would have got what she wanted, which was Matthew.’
PC Lawson shakes her head. ‘As you know from the
text messages, this wasn’t just about Matthew, it was also about money, your money. She felt very strongly that your father should have made some kind of provision for her in his will – she kept saying that your parents used to call her their second daughter – so she felt cheated when everything was left to you.’
‘I didn’t know about the money, not until Mum died.’
‘Yes, Rachel said. And while you remained single,
she felt that she would be able to have some sort of share of it. When you got married, and she could see she wasn’t your top priority any more, the resentment towards you built up and she decided that the only way to get her hands on what she felt was her due was through Matthew. She set out to have an affair with him and once he was in love with her, they concocted their plan to have you certified as mentally unstable so that Matthew could get control of your money. The day Jane confronted her, they were about to start their campaign against you – it was bad timing, if you like. If Jane had
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told you about her and Matthew, all her carefully laid plans would have been for nothing.’