Page 64 of You Can't Hurt Me

Clear Blue Early detection test—£21.99.

Superdrug King Street. 24 June 2019

The date jumps out at me and I freeze.

The day Eva died. Nausea seeps through me like a poison, black dots prickle the edges of my vision. Eva would have taken this test two years ago. She would have felt sick too perhaps, her hand shaking as she crouched over the toilet, peeing on the stick, willing that second blue line not to come into being.

An icy certainty sweeps up my spine. The stark reality of that date hits me. He told me he had discovered the pregnancy test many months before Eva died.

Three months. You’re sure about that?

Yes, completely sure.

I check again, the numbers blur before my eyes. I struggle to think of a reasonable explanation.

Fuck, Nate. You lied.

I cry out loud, on my knees now, in Eva’s wardrobe, the smell of her clothes, the satin slip dress like a discarded second skin beside me. The receipt is crystal clear. I scan it once more, nausea rising all over again. Then I catch the payment details below it.

MASTERCARD **** **** **** 4617

The last four digits of a credit card, one that’s all too familiar to me. These are the numbers I have tapped into my online banking app countless times to transfer rental income or the odd sum to cover a flight.

Tony’s card. He paid for Eva’s pregnancy test.

Did this mean that Tony was the father? Did Nate know?

Worse, had he really found out about Eva’s affair right before her death?

You lied. You’re a seasoned professional after all, poisoned by more secrets than I am.

These omissions flay me. He had known this whole time, that his wife’s lover was my brother, that’s why he questioned me about Tony’s surname back in Dungeness. He was piecing it together right then, in that moment. He lied about Priya to distract me from the real affair. I knew it didn’t add up and that’s why.

He told the inquest that he left early in the morning for his university conference, that he was away for the whole of that day, returning the next morning to find her body. This test could be different to the one he found, but that seems highly unlikely.

What was he so desperate to conceal? Kath’s theory about the fentanyl flashes in my mind. So does the image of her sculptures, the female statues scored through over and over. Right across their bellies. Who would have done that and why? Eva, in an act of defiance, a final work of art: expressing her fury at the way men chose to control her body, her condition.

I wrap the towel tight around myself, replace everything except the receipt. I grip it in my palm, close Eva’s door and I’m back in Nate’s room. Swiftly I get dressed, turn my back to the bed, the coil of sheets where we lay last night. Another country now.

Anger burns in my throat, spiking my veins. I’m struck for a moment by how novel it is to feel self-righteous. My secrets amount to nothing compared to his. His fake compassion, the interest in my past. Our future that he dangled before me. The possibility of a new start in New York. A brilliant strategy to divert me from the real story, the one he was never going to tell me with a second inquest looming.

And what’s more: if he did find the pregnancy test on the day she died, it means he still had the chance—and the drugs—to react accordingly. When I get home, I lie on my bed, try to cry but I am beyond tears. Carefully, I unfold the receipt, look at it again until the numbers and letters blur. Outside there is the steady metronomic thud of a child kicking a ball against the garden fence. Over and over, two questions circle and land.

Who was Eva most undone by? Who did she fear more—Tony or Nate?

25

Late in the afternoon I take another shower, turn the water up to scalding. On a cellular level he remains, last night shimmering through me, despite my best efforts to despise him. I wanted so badly to believe everything he said was true, how he felt about me, what was really happening between us.

I’m barely dressed when I hear the buzzer and run to the hall. One more buzz, a moment of silence followed by the mechanical click of a key in the door.

“Hey.”

I freeze. “Tony? How come you’ve got a key?”

He steps in and closes the door.

“It’s Amira’s.” He dangles it in front of me. “Nice welcome.”

---