Page 44 of Kept
I start the caramel and prepare the mould before peeling the four pears for the gâteau poires caramel, a dessert I’m sure Margarita would have loved; caramel pear cake sounded right up her alley.
As I begin measuring the rest of the ingredients for the cake, the phone rings and I frown. I can see from caller ID it is Blake. I hope he is not cancelling, otherwise, I murdered the crayfish for nothing.
“Don’t tell me; you have to work earlier tonight?”
“No, that is not why I’m calling.”
His voice sounds serious, business-like, and I’m immediately on edge.
“What’s wrong?”
“I’m just following up on something you told me earlier. You said James was on the street near Le Boufantania Restaurant on the night you fell down; the night you felt sure you were being followed, and he gave you a lift home.
“Yes.”
“What were you doing on that street that night?”
“Uh, I’d been to the restaurant.”
“Le Boufantania?”
“Yes.”
There is silence on the other end for a moment, a longer silence than I knew was good, and I begin to feel my heart beat wildly.
“Josie, did you pay for your meal that night?”
Now it is my turn to be silent.
“Josie?”
“No,” I whisper.
“We will talk about it when I come over,” he says, after several minutes of me staring at the phone in my hand, willing my mouth to come up with something, anything, to mitigate my appalling behaviour.
“OK,” I squeak, hanging up.
It doesn’t take long for the tears and panic to set in.
‘Oh, dear God, now I’m going to jail. Fuck. And he is going to dump me. And why wouldn’t he? No man would want to go out with a liar and a thief – especially not a police officer rising up the ladder. Oh God! Margarita, what have I done? And where are you? Where the fuck are you?’
I allow myself a few more minutes to freak out, before acknowledging that this was bound to happen, and I needed to face the music.
“Just tell him the truth, Josephine,” I tell my reflection as I stare out the front window at the traffic rushing by. “Just tell him the truth and hope he understands you won’t do it again.”
Finally, my tears dry, I turn from the window and pull the manuscript from my bag. I leave the one James had recently given me in there. I hadn’t looked at that yet. Blake told me it would likely be full of still more psychological games and taunts and I shouldn’t put that shit into my head.
Instead, I turn to the original journal, the one I had found in the park, and scour it once again for a hint, any hint, of what might have happened to my friend.
As I get to the last page though, I frown, because it is no longer the last page.
A new entry has been made.
A new entry that could only have been written last night while I slept – because I had kept it with me all day.
I look at the entry and gasp.
The handwriting is the same as in the rest of the journal – and yet, it can’t be. James is still in jail.
