Page 90 of Close to You
It took around twenty minutes to drive along the country roads from Little Bush Woods. If David sent me there for nine, it gave him a good head start here.
‘I thought I heard noises at the back,’ Jane says. ‘I went to the door and the next thing I know, you’re here.’ She stops and then adds: ‘How did you get in?’
‘The front door wasn’t locked. Not enough that anyone could see from a distance – but enough that it could be pushed open. I came in and then… I don’t know. I heard a noise, but then I woke up in your living room. I think someone stabbed something into my neck. I sort of remember shaking, but I’m not sure.’
I touch the spot on my neck without thinking, then I fill a glass with water and drink it down.
‘Let’s see,’ Jane says, and I tilt my head to the side as she peers closely at it like a mother with a child’s scabbed knee. ‘What do you think it was?’ she asks.
‘I don’t know. Maybe a stun gun? Something like that?’
‘Have I got them?’ She steps away and tilts her head back so I can see her neck.
There are a pair of similar dimples in the same place on her neck – but they are already fading, with the redness disappearing back to the regular colour of her skin.
‘Sort of,’ I say.
‘Could it be David?’
Jane has finally asked the question specifically. He’s dead – and yet I saw him, too. Someone’s been texting me. I can hardly tell her that I rolled his body into a lake. She thinks he disappeared.
‘Why would he do this?’ I say, trying to think of something better.
‘I don’t know.’ She pauses for a second, glances away momentarily and then adds: ‘I suppose I was never quite sure why he left. Did you have an argument? Did something happen between you…?’
She reaches inside her top and scratches her shoulder. It’s something done so absent-mindedly that I almost miss it. The mole she was supposed to have removed is still there. Jane catches herself scratching, but, by then, it’s already too late.
‘One of the surgeons was off,’ she says. ‘Some sort of miscommunication. I’ve got to go back.’
I’m not sure precisely why, but it’s as if a switch has been flicked. It’s not even the fact she still has the mole, it’s more the way she phrased her questions about David. We’ve talked about reasons for him leaving before. I’ve always said I didn’t know – because that’s all I have. This time, she was pushing the points specifically.
We lock eyes and there, in that moment, I know.
Not only that, she knows that I know.
‘Norah,’ I say, quietly.
Jane’s eyes narrow: ‘What about her?’
‘When I woke you up, she would have been your first concern. Not my hair, not whether David was around – but Norah.’
Jane is silent for a moment. After everything, it’s her own daughter who has caught her out.
‘It was you, wasn’t it?’ I say. ‘All of this was you. David. Everything.’
Jane bows her head slightly and bites her lip, before pushing up until she’s standing with her arms folded. Her features are fixed and unblinking.
‘Well,’ she says. ‘It took you long enough…’
Forty-Five
Jane is between me and the door, but I’m not sure if she feels like a threat anyway. Then my neck starts to singe with pain and I remember that I’ve already been knocked out once.
‘What was the point?’ I say. ‘To cut my hair…?’
‘It wasn’t a bad start,’ Jane replies. Her posture has changed from slumped and downtrodden to being rigid and primed. She reaches into the drawer that’s closest to her, fumbling underneath some tea towels until she finds what she’s looking for and places it on the table at her side. It looks like some sort of plastic gun, like a heavier water pistol.
‘Is that a stun gun?’ I ask.
