Part 26 (1/2)

'And so you lured him up to the house, and then you shot him.'

No. Oh Jesus. I must speak. I must say something to make Lamarr shut up, to make these smooth, plum-coloured, vicious accusations go away.

'It's true isn't it, Nora?' she says, and her voice is soft and gentle, and finally, at last, she sits on the end of my bed and puts out her hand. 'Isn't it?'

I look up. My eyes are swimming, but through it I see Lamarr's face, her sympathetic eyes, her heavy earrings, impossibly heavy for such a slender neck to support. I hear the click and whirr of the tape recorder.

I find my voice.

'I want to see a solicitor.'

28.

I TRY TO think back to the time-stamp of the first text, the one I supposedly sent to James, the one sent from my phone at 4.52 p.m. I was out on my run. My phone was unprotected, up in my room. So who else had access to it?

Clare hadn't arrived yet I know that for sure since I met her in the drive coming up to the house, but it could have been any of the others.

But why? Why would they want to destroy me like this destroy James, destroy Clare?

I try to think through the possibilities.

Melanie seems the least likely. Yes, she was there while I was out on my run, in fact she was one of the few people who was up and about at the time of the second run. But I can't believe that she could possibly care about me or James enough to do this. Why risk everything to incriminate someone she'd never even met? And besides, she'd gone by the time James arrived, by the time ... by the time ... I shut my eyes, trying to shut out the pictures of James lying shattered and b.l.o.o.d.y on the wooden floor. She could still have swapped the cartridge, a tiny voice whispers in the back of my mind. She could have done that any time. And maybe that would explain why she left in such a hurry ...? It's true. She could have swapped the cartridge. But surely she couldn't have predicted the rest the open door, the gun, the struggle ...

Tom, then. He had the means he was there in the house when my phone was, he was there at the shooting. And it suddenly strikes me he was the one who sent Clare driving off into the forest alone. What did make her suddenly leave like that? We only have his word about what he said to her, and now, in the light of what's happened, the fact that she misheard him so radically seems a little convenient. Would she really just go haring off into the night like that, without double-checking? Nina was the doctor, after all. She was James's best chance of survival.

What if he told her to go? He could have said anything that Nina wasn't coming, that she'd said to get going and wait for her at the hospital. As for motive ... I think back to the drunken conversation we had about his husband and James. If only I'd paid attention. If only I'd listened! But I was bored bored by the litany of names I didn't recognise, and the b.i.t.c.hy theatre politics. Is it possible that there's something there, some grudge between Bruce and James? Or maybe maybe quite the opposite.

It seems unlikely though. And even if he did send Clare off into the night, what would it achieve? He couldn't have predicted what would happen.

Most importantly, though, he could not have known about my past with James. Unless ... unless someone told him.

Clare could have told him. I can't get away from that. But the thing is this: this murder has been set up in such a way that it didn't just destroy James, it is destroying me and Clare too. It doesn't just feel like collateral damage; there is something incredibly malicious and personal about the way I have been deliberately dragged in, reminding us both of long-forgotten sores. Who would do that? Why would anyone do that?

I try to look at this like one of my books. If I were writing this, I could imagine a reason for Tom to hurt James. And I could probably manufacture a motive for him to hurt Clare in the process. But me? Why go to all these lengths to bring in someone he doesn't even know? The only person who could possibly want to do that would be someone who knows all three of us. Someone who was there at the time it all blew up. Someone like ...

Nina.

But my mind s.h.i.+es away from that, flinching from the idea. Nina can be odd; sharp and sarcastic and often thoughtless. But there's no way she'd do something like that. Surely? I think of her face, set in stern lines like grief, as she remembered the gunshot wounds she'd treated in Colombia. She lives to help people. Surely she'd never do this?

But something is whispering in my ear, a little voice, reminding me of how callous Nina can be. I remember her saying once, very drunk, 'Surgeons don't care about people, not in a touchy-feely way. They're like mechanics: they just want to cut them up, see how they work, dismantle them. Your average surgeon's like a little boy who takes apart his dad's watch to see how it works and then can't get it back together. The more skilled you get, the better you get at rea.s.sembling the parts. But we always leave a scar.'

And I think, too, about her occasional shocking flashes of contempt for Clare. I think about her savagery that night when she talked about how Clare wanted to push and prod and get off on other people's reactions, her bitterness about the way Clare outed her all those years ago. Is there something there, some reason she's never forgiven Clare?

And finally, I think about her actions on the first night we arrived. The I Have Never game. I remember the deliberate malice of her drawling, I have never f.u.c.ked James Cooper.

Suddenly, in the over-heated little sauna of a room, I feel cold. Because that is the kind of cruel, personal spite that lies behind this whole crazy situation. It wasn't just curiosity about me and James. It wasn't thoughtlessness. It was deliberate cruelty to me and to Clare. Who is pus.h.i.+ng and prodding and getting off on people's reactions now?

But I push that thought away. I will not think about Nina like this. I will not. This will send me mad if I let it.

Flo. Flo is the name I keep coming back to. Flo was there from the beginning. Flo invited the guests. Flo held the gun. Flo was the one who claimed it was loaded with blanks.

Flo with her strange obsession with Clare. With her strange, unstable intensity. She could have found out about me and James at any point she's Clare's best friend, after all, has been since university. What more likely than Clare confiding in her about James and me?

Is that why she's taken an overdose? Has she realised what she's done?

I am looking up, looking into s.p.a.ce as I think all this out, and then suddenly my eyes focus on something, on a movement outside the door.

And I realise what it is.

The guard is back the police guard at my door. Only this time I have absolutely zero doubt: they are not there to protect me. They are there to keep me in. I'm not going home when they discharge me, I'm going to a police station. I will be arrested, and questioned, and most likely charged if they think they can make this stick.

Coldly, dispa.s.sionately, I try to examine the last person at the hen night: the case against myself.

I was there. I could have sent those texts to James. I could have swapped the live round for the blanks. I had my hand on the gun when Flo fired. What could be more easy than nudging the barrel to ensure it was pointing at James as he came up the stairs?

And, more importantly, I was there at the second half of James's murder. I was in the car when it drove off the road.

What the h.e.l.l happened in that car? Why can't I remember?

I think back to what Dr Miller said: Sometimes the brain suppresses events that we're not quite ready to deal with. I suppose it's a ... coping mechanism, if you will.

What is it that my brain cannot cope with? Is it the truth?

I realise I'm s.h.i.+vering as if I'm cold, even though the heat of the hospital is as stifling as ever, and I pull Nina's cardigan from the foot of the bed and huddle it round myself, breathing in her scent of f.a.gs and perfume, trying to steady myself.

It's not the thought of being arrested and charged that has shocked me so much I still don't believe that will really happen. Surely, surely if I just explain everything they will believe me?

What has really knocked me off balance is this: someone hates me enough to do this. But who?

I don't let myself think about the final possibility. It's one too horrible for me to allow it into my mind, except in tiny niggling whispers when I'm thinking about other things.

But as I huddle down beneath the thin hospital blanket, Nina's cardigan around my shoulders, one of those whispers comes: What if it's true?

The rest of the day goes slowly, as if I'm moving through air made of treacle. It feels like the nightmares I sometimes have where my limbs are too heavy to move. Something is pursuing me, and I have to get away, but I'm stuck in mud, my legs are numb and slow, and all I can do is wade painfully through the dream, with the unspecified horror behind me getting closer and closer.

My little room feels more and more like a prison cell, with the narrow hatch of reinforced gla.s.s, and the guard outside the door.

If they release me, I know now what will happen. I will not be going home. I will be arrested, and taken to a police station, and then probably charged. The texts are enough evidence to hold me, along with the fact that I denied having sent them.

I remember, a long time ago, when I wrote my first book, speaking to a policeman about interviewing techniques. You listen, he said. You listen for the lie.

Lamarr and Roberts have found their lie: I told them I did not send those texts. And yet, there they are.

I try to eat, but the food is tasteless and I leave most of it on the tray. I try to do a crossword, but the words fall away from me, they are just typing on a page and my mind's eye is being invaded by other pictures.

Me, in the dock at court, in a prison cell.