‘Liar!’
He glanced back at me and shrugged. ‘Think what you like. I also knew it was you the second I walked out and saw your car parked on the street, by the way.’ He nodded at the bumper of the BMW, just visible. ‘I’ve been in that car a lot. If you’re going to do this sort of thing, you need to get a fuckload better at it. Fast. Goodbye.’
He turned and ambled off. My moment of ‘victory’ had already slipped away. I’d achieved nothing.
‘I’ll pay you!’ I shouted after him desperately. ‘I’ll pay you to withdraw the complaint and leave her alone. She doesn’t deserve this. She’s a good person.’
‘I don’t need it!’ He laughed. ‘I’m going…’ he called out teasingly, and I felt the rage whirling up inside me all over again at that, as he made it all into a joke while pausing to briefly punch a code into a security keypad. I almost ran up behind him, saw myself grabbing around his neck and dragging him backwards, wrenching him from left to right, choking the humour out of him. But the heavy door swung open, he disappeared back into the building and it slammed shut again – leaving me breathing heavily and blinded with frustrated rage, just standing alone in the car park, like the fool I was.
* * *
‘Do you know how guilty that makes me sound? You’ll pay him to withdraw the allegation? What were you thinking?’ Alex had her hands on the side of her head, fingers threaded through her hair, as she stared at me in disbelief from the bed. ‘I can’t believe this can be happening. After the way you and David looked at me earlier when I said I’d almost driven over to his house. You made me promise not to go near him again, and then you go out the very same afternoon to his school to threaten him?’ She picked up a magazine next to her and flung it across the room so suddenly I jumped. ‘What if they’ve got security cameras filming the car park? What if he’s audio-recorded you on his phone without you realising? You’ve just GIVEN him his next burst of publicity! You stupid idiot!’
‘All right, calm down.’ I put my hands up. ‘I just—’
‘Calm down?’ She raised her voice; her eyes were wild and unblinking as she glared at me. She looked deranged with anger.
‘I get that I’ve fucked up, but please, shhh!’ I begged. ‘The girls are downstairs watching Paw Patrol, I don’t want them to hear you like this.’
‘Then don’t do irredeemably insane things like this that make me want to kill you.’ She actually shook both her fists at me. She’d gone white. ‘I’m so angry!’ she gasped in disbelief.
I was completely taken aback by her reaction. ‘I was trying to help. I wanted to go there and ask him to reconsider, instead of you doing it,’ I said quietly, ‘so that you’d know you HAD tried everything, without actually placing yourself at risk. I just did it without thinking.’
‘Isn’t that exactly what got us into this mess in the first place?’ she shot back immediately. ‘You acting without thinking?’
Wow. I just stood there, not sure what to say to that, as she collapsed back onto the pillow again, exhausted.
‘I think David might have had a good idea earlier – I’ll take the kids to Mum’s tonight if that’s OK? I’ve already cancelled the agency girl coming,’ I said after a moment’s silence. ‘You’ve had a really difficult day, I get that. You’re overwhelmed with stress, you’ve literally not slept in God knows how long, and tonight’s the first night you’re going to take a sleeping pill. Like he said, let’s try and make this a success and clear the decks so you haven’t got any little voices calling out in the night and disturbing you.’ Plus, I thought privately, your behaviour today has been at best unpredictable, and you’re really starting to scare me.
I didn’t want Maisie and Tilly around Alex when she was like this. She had done so well at keeping things as normal as possible for them, but it was clear she had reached a tipping point, needed space to rest, and the opportunity to pull herself back from the edge. ‘I’ll give them tea, pack them a little bag, drive them over and come straight back. Mum would love it – she’s already offered a million times. I’ll go back and get them tomorrow, after you’ve rested.’
Alex was staring out of the window. ‘It might be best.’ Her voice was flat again, as if she’d simply given up. ‘At the very least they’re sensing our tension, and it’s not fair to them. They’ve done nothing wrong.’
‘Agreed. Well, that’s settled then. I’ll go and call Mum.’ I felt relieved and turned to leave the room, as she said suddenly: ‘I was serious earlier. I want to kill him, Rob. My daughters are going to think the very worst of me forever. This will change the way they feel about me for the rest of their lives, and it is not fair. If I could do it and not get caught, I would.’ She looked at me, frightened. ‘And I’m a doctor. I’m supposed to protect life.’ She held out a hand to me desperately. ‘What is happening to me?’
‘You are very, very tired. You are suffering from extreme stress.’ I repeated it again, went straight over, took her hand and sat down on the bed in front of her. ‘These are normal feelings. I wanted to kill him earlier too. He said some stuff about you that…’
She tensed. ‘What sort of stuff?’
I hesitated. ‘That he was going to post a picture with his shirt off, because he knew you’d like it.’
She looked disgusted and shuddered.
‘I honestly think this is all about his feelings for you. He’s used to getting what he wants. I could see that.’
‘You might be right.’ She shifted uncomfortably. ‘I’d be lying if I said it hadn’t crossed my mind. I’m sorry he said things to deliberately upset you. Sometimes I think it can be harder to watch someone you love suffer than go through it yourself.’
‘It’s wasn’t great, no…’ I agreed, thinking for a moment about Jonathan stood in front of me, amused, as he waited for me to hang myself and admit, like a total amateur, I wasn’t who I’d pretended to be.
‘You do still love me, Rob… don’t you?’
‘Of course I do. He has no remorse about what he’s done at all, you know,’ I said suddenly. ‘It was… quite an eye-opener for me. He’s not going to have any problem lying to a tribunal if there’s a hearing.’
‘Which there will be,’ she said. ‘He’ll love that. It will offer no end of credibility to his nasty little book. Do you think we could get away with it?’ She turned her head back, looked at me and smiled sadly.
‘What, killing him?’ I shrugged. ‘I’d do it and get caught if today’s performance is anything to go by. I think my behaviour over the last few weeks has firmly established you’re the brains in this relationship, but I’ll have a go if you like?’
She snorted. ‘Thanks.’
‘Or I’ll just cover for you. Bonnie and Clyde.’
‘They robbed banks; they weren’t assassins.’
‘You see?’ I squeezed her hand, dropped it and stood up. ‘Like I said, you’re the brains of this outfit.’ I looked down at her and felt a sudden rush of love. ‘We will get through this, Al. I promise you. We’ll do whatever it takes to defend your reputation, and our girls WILL know that they have the most amazing mother in the world.’ I meant every single word.
She started to tear up again. ‘I’m just so frightened that this has become the perfect storm now, what with all of the other stuff that’s appearing in the news. What if no one believes me and this never goes away?’
‘It will. I promise.’
She nodded but it was obvious she was just agreeing to stop me talking. She’d had enough. ‘I’ll come down in a minute and sit with them before you take them to your mum’s, once I’ve sorted myself out a bit.’
‘Sure,’ I said, reaching the door. ‘But only if you feel up to it. They know you’re not going anywhere, Al. Don’t worry. They’re fine. Just fine.’