Page 61 of The Blue Hour

44

Grace’s tread is leaden as she descends from the rock. As soon as she arrives on safer ground, she does her best to straighten up, shoulders back, head held high, but she gathers pace, scurrying along the path until gratefully she steps from sunshine into shade.

She has gambled, and she has lost.

She walks through the trees, pulse beating at the base of her throat, her blood dangerously close to the surface of her skin. So fragile, she thinks, it’s absurd how fragile we are, how ill-suited to a world as perilous as this one. We should be like wolves, we should be able to hide in the shadows, to run for miles, to tear our prey with our teeth.

We should be able to see in the dark.

Looking back, she realizes that Becker isn’t following. Perhaps he took the long way around the wood, perhaps he is still on the rock. Making a phone call? She hoped that his devotion to Vanessa would be enough to keep him quiet, but she fears his sense of civic duty will prevail. He’s a good man, after all.

She’s a little unsteady on her feet, her legs trembling after all that climbing. She needs to rest. Stepping off the path, she crouches down, leaning against the trunk of one of the trees,allowing her mind to empty. She inhales the earthy green scent of leaf mould, listens to the slow creak of old pines resisting the wind, to birdsong and the quick, frantic rustle of tiny animals in the undergrowth.

There is life here, more life than anywhere else in the wood: this is where the trees were ripped, root and branch, where their trunks lay rotting, feeding the earth. This is where the light gets in. Grace knows this place better than any in the wood, it’s the place she returns to, over and over, when trying to make sense of all the things that confound her, when trying to make sense of herself.

At this moment, she would like this cold black earth to split open, to swallow her. How easily she laid all the blame at Vanessa’s door! She would never have imagined herself so disloyal, but something about the way Becker was looking at her made it impossible to tell the truth. She couldn’t find the words. She’s never had to before, she never needed to: she and Vanessa understood each other.

Vanessa knew Grace was responsible for Julian’s death, she made that clear in her letter:You know things you shouldn’t, she wrote, and though it took a while, Grace figured out what she meant – she meantMorocco, she meantVenice. How could Grace know about those plans? They were made after Grace left the island, when Vanessa and Julian were alone. So it followed: Grace must have spoken to Julian some time after Vanessa went to Glasgow. In itself, no smoking gun, but enough to make Vanessa wonder, or perhaps to confirm a suspicion that had already formed.

This understanding remained, an unspoken thing between them, for the rest of their time together – ugly at first, and painful. But when Vanessa paintedLove, Grace came to understand that she wasn’t angry – or at least she wasn’t angry any longer.When Grace looked atLove, she knew that Vanessa had forgiven her, becauseLoveshowed her that Vanessa understood that an act of violence can be an act of devotion, too.

Would Becker understand that, if she told him what really happened? She doubts it. Confession would be cathartic, but Grace knows the feeling of relief wouldn’t last. Saying the words out loud is one thing, then you have to live with them. You leave the house as one person and you return as another; you have to walk through the wood and past the studio where Julian died and over the tank where his body rotted, and you cannot be the person you were before.

She hears the sharp crack of a branch snapping and when she looks around, there he is, walking slowly but steadily towards her. ‘How did it happen?’ he asks, as soon as he reaches her. ‘How did Julian die?’

Grace hesitates. Part of her would like so much to tell him, but now’s not the time, and try as she might to imagine how Vanessa would have killed him, she can’t picture it. ‘You mustn’t think about that,’ she says. ‘It’s terrible, of course it was terrible, but you mustn’t feel sorry for Julian, he wasn’t a good man, he wasn’t at all like you.’ She reaches out to place a hand on his arm but he recoils extravagantly. Déjà vu hits her like a fist to the solar plexus, breathtaking.

Becker forces his way past her. He walks briskly away, through the wood, towards the light, his desire to put physical space between them almost palpable. A wave of disappointment as powerful as grief crashes over her. Her mind is no longer blank, she sees what lies before her.

Grace has gambled, and Becker has lost.

45

Where the fuck is his car key? The tide has turned, the water is receding fast and within the next half-hour he will be able to cross, orwouldbe able to cross, if only he could find his car key. He has searched the kitchen and the living room, now he is checking behind the paintings in Vanessa’s room for the third time.

The front door slams. Grace is back.

Didn’t he throw it down on to the kitchen table when he came into the house, when they heard that noise? Could she have moved it? He looks around Vanessa’s room, his eye falling on the bedside table. He’s about to open the drawer when Grace appears in the doorway.

‘It isn’t in there,’ she says sharply. ‘Is it possible you dropped it on the beach?’

Becker yanks the drawer open, eyeballing her all the while. The drawer is empty. Grace holds his gaze and then turns away; he listens to her footfall as she stomps back to the kitchen.Christ’s sake.He sits down heavily on Vanessa’s bed, head in hands. Maybe he did drop it on the beach? If so, it’s long gone, it’ll be halfway to Northern Ireland by now. He’ll have to walk across the causeway and call someone when he gets to the other side. Maybe Sebastian can send one of the staff with his other key?

He climbs wearily to his feet, crouches down and checks,again, underneath the bed. No key. Definitely no key, but right underneath the bedside table, pushed back against the skirting board, is the wifi router, and its light is off. It’s unplugged.

Someone has unplugged it.

In the pit of his stomach, something flips. On hands and knees he crawls closer and pushes the plug back into the socket, watching as the light flashes orange, orange, orange …

‘Have you found it?’

He scrabbles quickly to stand and hurries from the room, almost colliding with Grace in the hallway. ‘Well?’

‘No,’ he says. ‘No, you must be right, I must have dropped it on the beach.’

She nods. ‘I’ll make us a cup of tea,’ she says, turning back towards the kitchen, ‘and then we can go and look.’

Heart battering his ribs, he waits a moment before following her. ‘I doubt there’s much point,’ he says, ‘not after that storm.’ Grace has her back to him and is filling the kettle. ‘I don’t want tea,’ he says curtly, and she turns to look at him, expression almost wounded. ‘I’m going to walk across and call Fairburn,’ he says, ‘they can send someone with the spare.’ Grace nods again. She takes two glasses from the cupboard, filling them from the tap; she takes a sip from one glass and hands him the other. The water is brackish again, brackish and bitter.

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