Page 77 of Unforgivable

“Okay, yes. It was there. So, what about it? What did you want to show me?”

I raise a finger. “Wait.” I hear the car pull up outside. “Oh God. Get back down, now.”

He doesn’t understand what the problem is, and I have to push him down the step ladder. We’ve only just closed the trap door when Bronwyn appears up the stairs.

“What are you two doing?” she asks, cheerfully enough, but it still makes my stomach twist onto itself.

“I was telling Laura about my new job,” Jack says with a grin.

There’s a beat of hesitation. She’s still smiling, she turns to me. “On the landing?” she says.

“I was on my way to Charlie’s room. I got intercepted,” I say. Then I laugh. I don’t know why. I’m delirious. I sound like I’m snorting crack.

“You’ve got a job?” she says finally. “Jack! Honey! Wow! That’s wonderful news. Congratulations! I want to hear all about it!”

“Let me get changed first,” he says. “I’ll meet you two downstairs.”

“How was the house?” I ask, pouring myself a glass of wine and knocking it back in two gulps. “You’re buying?” My heart is knocking around my chest. I’m astonished she can’t hear it.

“It was fabulous. You should have come.” She frowns at me. “Did you get a rest?”

“Yes, no. Not really.”

* * *

“She hates me,” I say to Jack. I’m shaking, biting on a fingernail. We’re in the bedroom again. Jack told us downstairs about the new job over a glass of wine, or another one in my case. Bronwyn listened, enraptured, while I tried to. He said something about a conference he needed to attend next week, that he’d be hitting the ground running, that this was exactly the kind of firm he wanted to work for. I try to feel excited for him, I really do, but all I can think about is the painting, and the fact that it’s gone, and a slow coil of anxiety wraps itself around my chest, because I don’t know if she knows I’ve seen it.

“She doesn’t hate you,” he says.

“Yes, she does, Jack.”

“She’s been really great during this visit, don’t you agree? You said so yourself.”

“Because I didn’t know she hated me back then, see the difference?”

He winces. “She doesn’t hate you.”

“You didn’t see the painting.”

He rubs his hands over his face. He looks tired. “Are you sure you saw the painting, Laura?”

“I’m not crazy, Jack. If that’s your question. Also, it was hard to miss. She had sprayed green paint all over it, insults. I’m a slut. I told you all that. I didn’t imagine it.”

I come to sit next to him. He puts his arm around my shoulder. I let out a long breath.

“I have to tell you something,” I say. “Oh God. Actually, I have to tell you lots of things. But the main one is, I think Bronwyn is trying to break us up.”

“Laura…”

“She sent you a text, Jack, pretending that the text was from Summer—”

He frowns. “Summer? The woman you work with?”

“Yes.”

I tell him what I asked Summer to do. “I thought Bronwyn wanted to get back together with you. I mean, I still think she wants to. I don’t know. I’m confused. I’m sorry.”

“You did what?”

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