Page 61 of We Live Here Now
“Joe hasn’t noticed a thing.” She looks over to me. “Since you released me.” I must look stupefied, because she laughs. “Hard to get your head around it, isn’t it?” She looks up at the house. “I won’t come inside again if it’s all the same to you. I’ve spent far too long in there for one lifetime.”
She takes a few steps forward and then leans against the small wall by the steps where I’m standing, watching her, thisnewSally.
“But now I’m free. Thanks to you.” She looks down at her hands. “So strange to be in such an old body. Enjoy your youthful skin while you have it. Getting out of the shower in front of the bathroom mirror has been a horror story that’s taking some getting used to. But I shouldn’t complain. I thought I was stuck in there forever.”
It’s so strange, listening to her. She’s still Sally, but with added ingredients. An edge. An anger. Is this because of what happened to her, or was it always there? Is it part of why Joe killed her?
“And maybe I nearly was.” She shakes her head. “In that godawful room upstairs you eventually start to mesh with the house. It sucks you in and it gets harder to beyou.It eats you up. Devours your being. Fortuna Carmichael’s husband, Gerald, eventually died out here so that killed him in there, but there are echoes of otherstrapped in the brickwork. People who lived too long out here to ever truly release the bits inside when they died. They feed the house. It likes it.”
She shivers and I realize that however bad the feeling I got from her presence in the room was, it was nowhere near as awful as the room felt for her.
“The books,” I say eventually. “Was that you?”
“You will die here.” She lights a cigarette and exhales. “I needed to get your attention. And it was a warning. This place. It brings out the worst in people. It’s been doing it with you two. I saw everything.” Her eyes are flint sharp. “Your husband’s hidden gambling.” She nods down the lane. “You should leave him. He’s a weak piece of shit. What’s going to happen the next time you have a crisis? All your money down the drain again?”
“He needs help,” I say. “I’ve got some money coming—”
“Ah yes, the blackmail.” She laughs. “You surprised me there. But like I said, I think there’s something in this house that brings the worst parts of you to the surface. I was always jealous, yes, and there’s no way I could have done the open relationship thing long-term, but being in this house made me worse. It made Joe more selfish too. The bastard murdered me, after all.”
“Do you think, after you came back, he realized there was part of you trapped in Larkin Lodge?”
“I don’t think he gave it a moment’s thought. Joe is all about Joe, and I was compliant and adoring. I honestly think he’s persuaded himself it was just a bad trip. That he never killed me at all.” She takes another fierce inhale. “But he did. And he has to pay for that.”
“What are you going to do?” I can hear the rumble of an engine heading back up the lane, Joe come to collect his loving wife.Allof her. I watch her posture and expression change as the car comes into view, straighter and more serene.
“I’ll think of something,” she says before coming forward and kissing me on the cheek, enveloping me in her perfume. “Take care, Emily.” She squeezes my arm. “I owe you one. And I mean that.”
As she jumps in and they drive away, I wave as if everything is perfectly normal.
“Safe travels!” I call after them, and then Sally twists around and smiles a vicious goodbye at me, and I know in that instant that I’m very unlikely to see Joe ever again.
77
Freddie
The drive up the lane with a slight beer buzz doesn’t take the edge off the frustration of not having the time to reinforce my worries with Paul. As soon as Joe was on his way back to Sally, I’d begun to tell Paul that this calmer and happier Emily was only a show for visitors and that behind closed doors her moods were entirely different, but his phone rang and it was a sick parishioner who needed a visit.
Still, I think as I drive.There’s no rush.The bees buzz behind my eyes, impatiently contradicting me. Of course there’s a rush. Every day the noose of debt gets tighter and I get closer to losing my kneecaps. The road is full of gray slush, the snow melting into dirt. I wish Emily weren’t being so nice. So much like her old self. Maybe she isn’t thinking of divorcing me after all. I can’t decide if that’s a disappointment or not. How far down the road of setting up her suicide am I?
Setting up her suicide.I’m so weak. I have to laugh at how I sugarcoat things even to myself. Plotting her murder, that’s what I really mean. I have to be honest, at least with myself. The truth is that I’m thinking about killing my wife. If I gave her enough sleeping pills, it wouldn’t even hurt. She just wouldn’t wake up. I wouldn’t want to hurt her. God, I’m so tired.
I pull up at the postbox to empty it of any final demands and credit letters that I’m not even going to open before I throw them on the fire. The dread makes me stare at my phone for a moment, the temptation to havejust one goon the PokerPlayUK app that I’ve deleted and added back so many times now. I shove my phone intomy pocket and get out. If I’m really considering doing the unthinkable to get myself out of this mess, I need to stop now.
There are three bills waiting for me in the box, and I screw them up and stuff them into my pockets, but there’s something else.
A white A4 envelope neatly addressed to Emily.
A business envelope, and it feels like there’s a fair amount of paperwork inside. Shehasfiled for divorce.
I look more closely and see that it’s come from the company Mark works at. What the hell is Mark doing sending paperwork to Emily? It’s not like they’ve even ever been close. Is he somehow advising her on how to get the best out of this awful financial mess? Moving her pension somewhere out of reach maybe?
I open it as carefully as possible but the paper still tears, but nothing I can’t tape up and pretend it came that way. I pull out the documents, immediately recognizing them as paperwork for a Jersey account—Why the hell does Emily have a Jersey account?—and then look at the short note written in Mark’s busy scrawl paper-clipped to the front.
The 150k is all there. We’re done. Destroy the film of me and Cat. Get out of your friendship with Iso.
I stare for a very long time, totally confused. What film of Cat and Mark would Emily have? One hundred and fifty thousand pounds. Why would Mark give her all that money for it? The obvious truth slowly sinks in as a chill wind cuts through me. Mark is fucking Cat. Emily knows and has blackmailed him. Now she has a hundred and fifty thousand pounds hidden away. The truth dawns on me. She’s got a get-out plan for herself and is going to leave me in all the shit.
That fucking bitch.
