“Seb?” Something is wrong. I’m drifting sideways—but no, I’m not, I’m sitting at the counter; it’s the world that’s moving, spinning as if I’m drunk. Severine is next to me, something insistent in her manner; I don’t understand her expression, but then, I never did.
“Seb,” Caro repeats impatiently. “He sent you the flowers, didn’t he?” There’s something else within her now; the rapier edge that has always lurked is now glitteringly, dangerously unleashed, stabbing with an urgency I haven’t seen before. As if she has taken the cloak off the dagger. Why would she do that? What have I missed?
It’s an effort, but I manage to turn my head to her. The rest of the room is blurry, but Caro is in pin-sharp focus. “No, Caro, he didn’t. He loves his wife.” At least, I think, I hope he does. He certainly ought to. Then: dear God, why am I feeling like this?
She snorts dismissively. “Rubbish. That won’t last.” She frowns. “But he really shouldn’t be sending you flowers when we have an understanding.”
I stare at her. “Understanding? Don’t you know? Alina’s . . .” My words peter out. There’s too much to overcome for them to be born into the world, too much effort in creating them, moving my mouth and tongue, using my breath. This time I really do lay my head on the counter.
“Alina’s what?” demands Caro, drawing disconcertingly near to me. She angles her head to match mine. I’m close enough to see that her irises are curiously devoid of flecks or variation, a flat, uniform, alien blue. “Alina’s what?”
“Pregnant,” I manage to say, then I close my eyes. Must sleep, I think. Then—no, I mustn’t sleep, I have a plan to execute, this is all wrong, what have I missed? With a gargantuan effort I open my eyes. Caro’s face is still right in front of me. “What have you done to me, Caro?” I whisper.
She ignores me. “Pregnant?” she hisses, disbelieving. “No. She can’t be.” For once I see everything she’s thinking displayed on her face: her mind is racing down avenues, searching for alternative truths. “I don’t believe it.” Only she does believe it; I see the moment when that happens, and it’s desperately sad to watch: the outer shell falls away to reveal her awful hurt and fury and grief, laid bare for all to see, the vulnerable thirteen-year-old cruelly wounded once again. But there’s only Severine and me to witness.
“What have you done to me?” I whisper again. My eyelids are drifting closed.
“Pregnant.” I hear her almost spit the word. Then, “Pregnant,” I hear her say again, but thoughtfully this time. She’s already regrouping; the shell is already patched up and lacquered back into place. Once again, it’s admirable, if psychotic.
I try to force my eyes open again. There’s an important question I should be asking. Asking again. “Caro. What have you done to me?”
She’s gazing into the distance, but on my words she glances back at me. “Flunitrazepam,” she says succinctly. “About enough to fell an elephant. Also known as Rohypnol, or roofies. Mostly it hits the headlines as a date rape drug, but did you know that a study in Sweden found it was the most commonly used suicide drug? Lara would like to know that, I’m sure . . .” She frowns again, or maybe she doesn’t. I’m losing my ability to focus. I don’t understand what she is saying. A malicious smile crosses her face. “I know you, being such a clever Kate, must be thinking that no one will believe you committed suicide . . .”
Suicide?
Suicide. Caro is murdering me. Has been murdering me for a good while now, surely, for this drug to have taken effect to this extent. I should feel something about that, and I do, but it’s a small feeling, a tiny glowing ball of panic, smothered deep within me beneath cotton-wool layers of exhaustion and apathy. I can see what’s happening, I can see what’s going to happen, but I seem incapable of being anything other than a detached observer. The cold, hard, fear-forged Kate is gone, blasted away by mere chemicals; she may as well never have existed.
But . . . murder. How long has Caro been thinking of murder? Whilst I’ve been wondering . . . I’m not sure if I’ve said that out loud; Caro’s head turns to me, so perhaps I did speak. “I’ve been wondering . . . if we would have been friends . . . if I hadn’t been with Seb. Whilst . . .”—it’s almost funny; a gasp of a laugh escapes me—“you’ve been planning murder.” I think she stops in what she’s doing, I think her face is thrown into uncertainty for a moment, but my eyes are barely open. After a moment, they drift closed once more. I wonder what might have happened if I hadn’t jumped off the wall into Seb’s arms; if I’d turned to Tom instead. How would the spider’s web have been spun then?
But Caro is talking now; I wrench my eyes open again. She is talking, though she is doing something with her glass at the same time. Washing it, I realize, and putting it away, all the while taking care not to touch it with her bare fingers. Now she is rubbing down the wine bottle with the dishcloth, still talking. “. . . But actually everyone will believe it. Even your secretary Julie was saying how you didn’t seem yourself today, how you haven’t for a while. You’ve been overcome with guilt at killing that girl, you see. It’s what they’ll say; your death will be the proof of it. There’s no real evidence to point to any one of us over another; you and I both know Modan’s case is weak, but suicide is as good as a confession, isn’t it? Then this will all go away . . . And, yes, I know you must be thinking that nobody would believe you had access to drugs. But you’ve had a drug dealer’s number stored in your phone for a good long while now. Ever since my party, actually.” She gives a small self-congratulatory smile and reaches for my phone, which is lying on the counter. She scrolls adeptly through the contacts, then pushes it in front of my face, but it’s just a blurred mess of color to me. “You really should put a security code on your iPhone, you know.”
As she speaks I realize I have to do something, and I have to do it now before it’s too late for me to do anything at all. I summon up all the strength I can to make a grab for her, but once again I’ve already missed the moment. The grab is more of a swipe really: she jumps back easily, out of my limited field of vision, and the follow-through overbalances me, tumbling me into an awkward heap on the floor. It feels good to lie down. My cheek is resting against the lovely coolness of my kitchen tiles.
I don’t move. It’s unclear to me whether I even could if I tried. I look at the tiles, at the contrast of their smooth sheen with the uneven texture of the rough black grout; I let my focus relax further, and it seems that I am buoyed up on a sea of pale ivory tiles stretching before me to the horizon.
But Caro is still talking. I’m only getting snatches of what she’s saying, though, and only flashes of vision. It’s simply too difficult to keep my eyes open, and I can’t imagine why I should be trying to. There’s something about Seb kissing her, but I don’t know when that happened: recently, or in France, or years ago as teenagers? It doesn’t matter anyway. Time is stretching out, each event like a pearl on a string, each leading inevitably to the next. Seb was Seb, is Seb, could only ever have been Seb, and in his careless affection for Caro—never enough but sometimes too much—he sparked something in Caro, who could only ever be Caro. And therefore here we are . . . but Caro is still talking, and it’s all of it about Seb, about him sowing wild oats before settling down, how he said she was the only one who understood him, who was always there for him . . .
At one point I open my eyes again and find my iPhone a few inches from my nose. I don’t think it was there before.
My eyes close again.