Page 65

‘Okay.’ I take a deep breath. ‘I think your wife is crazy, a sociopath or a psychopath or something. I think you give her the pills because youknowshe’s crazy. I think when you first realised, you were trying to help her, and now you’re trying to contain her. I think that’s why you call home so often – to check up on her. I think Adele knows we slept together and she became my friend to turn me against you – I haven’t figured out quite why yet – but she’s definitely been playing with me – withus. She killed your pet cat just like she killed Marianne’s, and you can’t do anything about it, because she’s got something over you and threatens you with telling the police what happened to Rob. How he’s still dead on her estate somewhere. She told me that you killed Rob—’
He leans forward to say something, but I hold my hands up, silencing him. ‘Let me finish.’ He slumps back in his chair, accepting the accusation. ‘She told me that you killed Rob,’ I repeat, ‘butI don’t believe that.’ He looks up, a first glimmer of hope. ‘I think whatever happened to Rob,shedid it, and maybe you protected her in the aftermath because you loved her and she’d just lost her parents. I think you made a stupid, terrible mistake, and she’s been holding that against you forever, to keep you.’ Suddenly I feel weepy and I bite my tears back.
‘I have been so awful for believing her over you because you didn’t open up. I should have known. I should havetrustedmy feelings for you, but after Ian, I’ve forgotten how to trust a man, and I carried all that over into us.’
‘And it’s not easy to trust a man who’s cheating on his wife.’ He looks ashamed, and I don’t want us to dwell on that. Not right now. That’s not important.
‘When you were so angry, threatening me to make me stay away, I should have seen you were trying to protect me from her. But I didn’t. And she wassogood at seeming fragile. She wassogood at drawing me in. And I’msosorry I let her.’ I lean across the table and take his hand. ‘I need you to tell me everything, David. I am on your side. I’ve been stupid, but now I really need to hear from you what’s going on because I’m so sick of Adele’s lies, and I’m going to end up crazy if I don’t hear the truth.’
He stares at me for a long time, and I hope he sees the trust in my eyes and the feelings I have for him.
‘Whatever it is, David. I believe in you,’ I say. ‘But I need you to explain it all to me. The money, what happened with Rob. I need to know. Because then I’m going to tell you about the bad thing I’ve done, and you’re probably going to hate me for it.’
‘I could never hate you,’ he says, and then I really do feel as if I’m going to cry. What a mess I’ve got myself into.We’vegot ourselves into. How could I ever have thought he was a killer? He sips his coffee and then clears his throat, his eyes drifting around the bar. Is he trying not to cry too?
‘Just tell me,’ I say. One of us needs to be tough now, and that person is me.
‘It all feels so sordid.’ He stares down at his coffee. I have a feeling he won’t look up until this infected cyst of a story inside him is burst and all the poison is out. ‘My whole life does. But it didn’t start out that way. At first it was … well it was wonderful. God, I loved her. Adele was the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen. But not just that. She was sweet and funny. Her parents didn’t approve. I was the poor farmer’s boy whose father had pissed everything away drinking, and I was nearly five years older than her, and I’d known her, on and off, for pretty much for ever. She used to follow me around while I was working the fields around school, sometimes telling me about her nightmares.’
‘She was the little girl you gave the dream book to.’
He nods. ‘Not that it helped much.’
If only he knew. It must have been that book that taught Adele about the lucid dreaming and the second door. I want to mention it – I should mention it – but I want to hear the rest of his story first, before distracting him with something so hard to believe.
‘But as she grew up,’ he continues, ‘well … it … it felt so right. She was this ethereal creature who didn’t care about my rough hands and my shitty dad – she just sawme. She had faith in me. If it hadn’t been for her, I’d probably never have scraped my way into medical school. We were so in love. I can’t describe it. That way you can love so fully when you’re young.’ He pauses. ‘And then there was the fire.’
‘You saved her,’ I say. ‘Your scars.’
‘Yeah. Yeah, I did. I didn’t even feel the burns at the time. I remember the terrible heat. I remember thinking my lungs were blistering as I breathed, but mainly I remember thinking she was dead. She was out cold. Fumes or smoke inhalation or something. I couldn’t wake her up.’
I remember thinking the same trying to wake Adele. Her cold hand. Shaking her.How long has she had the second door?I nod for him to continue.
‘Did she start the fire?’ I ask.
‘I don’t know. I didn’t even consider it at the time, but since then …’ He trails off. I imagine he’s wondered about it a lot. ‘There was talk of arson. The police thought it could have been me. And even though I thought maybe someone could have started it, I never thought it could be her. Some disgruntled employee maybe – and there were many – Adele was too young to really grasp her parents’ natures, but her dad hadn’t exactly made his money without damaging a few people on the way. But I never thought it was her. She nearly died. If itwasher, she was taking a big risk.’
‘I think she likes taking risks,’ I say.
‘Perhaps. But she was so distraught. Wouldn’t sleep. It was like she was fading away. Maybe that was some form of guilt. She said she should have woken up. She could have saved them.’
Sleep. Dreams. Was Adele even there when her parents died? Had she set the fire and gone through the second door to make sure David was coming to save her? Or was she caught up in the smoke and passed out before she could escape herself?
‘And then she met Rob?’ I say. ‘At the therapy place?’
‘Westlands, yes. She really liked him, and being friends with him helped her. I hated it a bit at the time because I thought looking after her was my job, but I was still recovering from my burns, and I had uni. Adele insisted I go back – she even got her lawyers to sort out all my finances as soon as she could, which made me feel uncomfortable, but we were planning to get married anyway, and so she said I was being silly. Anyway, meeting Rob was good for her. I understood that. He was there and I wasn’t. I didn’t like that he was an ex-junkie though, and even though I never said it, I think she knew that. I sort of thought their friendship would be over when they left Westlands, but then she invited him to go and stay at the house. She was like that back then. Wanting to help people. Or at least that’s how it seemed.’
‘So what happened?’Rob. The notebook boy. Finally, I’m going to find out his fate.
‘I only met him once. Well, I went up for a weekend so I guess it’s more accurate to say I knew him for a couple of days. He was a spotty, skinny kid with braces. Nothing special. I don’t know what I was expecting. More charisma, I guess. He seemed young to me, for eighteen. He didn’t speak a lot, at any rate not for most of the weekend. Just stared at me and muttered answers to my questions, and then would have these over-the-top moments of trying too hard. He did this terrible chef routine one morning that I went along with, but to be honest, it made me uncomfortable. Adele said he was shy. Not good with people, but I found him strange, not that I told her that. We ended up staying up chatting for a couple of hours on the Saturday night after Adele went to bed, but I couldn’t click with him at all. He kept asking me stuff about our relationship. I was pretty sure he was jealous. When I left on the Sunday I was quietly wishing their friendship would come to a natural end soon.’ He pauses and swallows. ‘My wish came true, but there wasn’t anything natural about it.’
‘Rob died,’ I say.
Eventually, he nods. ‘I wasn’t there when it happened. That was ten days later.’
For the first time he looks up, right into my eyes. ‘I know where Rob is, but I didn’t put him there.’
Rob is dead. There it is. Plain fact. It comes as no surprise, and I realise I’ve believed that to be the case for a while.