Page 40 of The Vow
‘I think we all know quite categorically that isn’t the case.’ DI Lacey sounds disparaging. ‘It’s here in black and white – in the case notes.’ He pauses a moment. And I know it’s coming – the million-dollar question. ‘When did you find out your fiancé was having an affair?’
I look at him, not sure who he’s talking about. ‘Are you talking about Lara?’
‘I hardly think a fling, which happened before you and Mr Roche met, constitutes an affair.’ DI Lacey looks irritated.
I sit there, and a rush of blood surges to my face, because surely they know this. ‘When PC Page told me.’
DI Lacey looks at me suspiciously. ‘You genuinely had no idea before then?’
‘You don’t understand.’ Blinking away the tears suddenly filling my eyes, I gaze at PC Page. ‘If there were warning signs, I didn’t see them, but I wasn’t looking for them. Our wedding was two weeks away. My dress was upstairs. We’d written our vows … I thought we were happy.’ I tail off. Every word is true. ‘When he first disappeared, I suppose I was hoping there was an understandable reason. It was before I knew about Lara – and Cath. Obviously, now, the reality has sunk in.’ Sipping my water, I try to work out how to explain how I felt. ‘No-one is perfect.’ I hold her gaze. ‘If he had come back, I would have forgiven him. If you’re lucky enough to meet that person you love with all your heart, don’t you think you would make allowances for that? Yes, there might have been reasons for what he’d done, if other people had screwed him over, or things had happened in the past that meant now and then he made an error of judgement.’ I pause for a moment. ‘Everyone makes mistakes. I suppose it all comes down to one thing – how much you love.’
‘I honestly don’t get it.’ PC Page looks at me blankly, but Ialready know. She’s never loved the way I have. If she had, she’d be able to understand.
‘That’s how I felt,’ I say simply, looking at them both.
‘You say the two of you had written your own vows? Where are they?’ DI Lacey frowns at me.
‘Mine were on my laptop, but I’ve deleted the folder.’ Remembering the day of the bonfire, when I’d printed them off, then burned them with my dress, I shake my head. ‘Matt printed out his vows before he disappeared. I’ve looked for the piece of paper since then, but I couldn’t find it. The only person who might have a copy is Lara.’
‘What did you write, Ms Reid?’
At what seems the ultimate invasion of my privacy, I feel myself tense. ‘I can’t remember, word for word.’ There’s no way I’m repeating words written for our wedding in here, in front of them. My voice wavers as I go on. ‘I can’t bear much more of this. My fiancé’s betrayed me. No-one knows where he is and the life we were looking forward to has been ripped away … And now, I’ve been wrongly arrested.’ With tears pouring down my cheeks, I reach into my pocket and pull out a tissue, before turning to my solicitor. ‘I need a few minutes.’
‘My client would like a short break.’ Beside me, Andrew Nelson sounds nervous.
‘Very well.’ Pushing his chair back, DI Lacey gets to his feet, then checks his watch. ‘Five minutes, Ms Reid. Then we’ll continue.’
Once DI Lacey and PC Page have left us alone, Andrew Nelson gets up and walks across the room. After a few minutes, he turns back to me. ‘I don’t understand.’ He frowns. ‘How you had absolutely no idea anything was wrong.’
I look at him, remembering how I’d felt when I found out. ‘When you love someone, it’s the last thing you expect. Can’tyou see that? And I would have forgiven him at the beginning. I thought if he loved me enough, we could have left it in the past. I loved Matt.’
‘There are limits, though, surely?’ He sounds disbelieving. ‘When you knew he was seeing someone else, a woman he was allegedly leaving you for.’
‘That was where I had to draw the line.’ But I shake my head slowly, because I don’t think he gets it. Not everyone knows how many kinds of love there really are. I knowhiskind – the kind that comes with conditions. A one-sided trade-off –I love you as long as you meet my expectations of what love should be.‘Have you ever loved someone so totally that you’d do anything for them?’
The look of bewilderment crossing his face, as he shakes his head, tells me he hasn’t. But I hadn’t either. It was only when Matt and I met that everything changed. And changed again, when he betrayed me. ‘That’s how it was,’ I say briefly. ‘But not now.’
‘And you have no idea who might have sent you those flowers?’ Andrew Nelson has an expression of distaste on his face.
I shake my head. ‘I can’t think of anyone.’ Then I’m thinking of the blood again. ‘It was horrible.’ My voice is suddenly quiet. ‘The flowers, I mean. To think it was human blood, too.’ Possibly Matt’s. I fix my eyes on Andrew Nelson. ‘You have to find out what evidence they have against me.’
*
The interview is terminated early when PC Page gets called away to a traffic accident. It’s then that I realise I might be spending a night here. I wonder if the police are at my house – what they’re looking for, what they’ve found. If they’re searching through drawers and cupboards, rifling throughprivate messages on my phone. Having never bothered to lock it, I’ve made it easy for them. Then I think of the garden. The flowers and herbs I’ve nurtured, knowing the police won’t care if they damage them.
Exhausted, every fibre of my being craves a hot bath, the comfort of my own bed, while I try to stem the relentless flow of thoughts through my mind, imagining what evidence the police have. Lying back on the narrow bed, I gaze at the ceiling.
Slowly I’m realising how much has changed since Matt went missing. At the start, if he’d come back, even if I’d had the chance, I wouldn’t have confronted him. Already that seems unbelievable, but the Amy I used to be would still have been holding on to everything we’d dreamed of, terrified of losing it. Only now he’s gone can I admit the truth, if only to myself, about the other side of Matt. One I don’t like to think about. One I’ve never talked about, to anyone.
1996
Your efforts were futile, because there was no-one else for Kimberley or Charlie. They wanted to live together, wherever that was going to be. Forever. You didn’t know they were planning to go to the same uni, that they wanted to live in a modern apartment in Brighton or a warehouse flat in London. They had it all mapped out. Holidays around the world, three kids. They’d work hard, then retire early while they were still young enough to live.
But they could never have told you that. They knew how you felt, though, your jealousy a noxious, foetid cloud that followed you, its odour pervading everything that surrounded you. You couldn’t bear that Kimberley loved Charlie. Not when you wanted him for yourself. But you didn’t love him. People like you don’t love. It was about possession. Obsession. Control.
It consumed you, didn’t it? While the plan in your head grew bolder. Enough for you to commit one deadly act that tipped the scales, consciousness becoming intoxicated, innocence turning to evil, as you stopped at nothing; destroying a life you decided was simply dispensable.
Starting a ripple effect that even now, hasn’t stopped.
