It Could Have Been Her(83)
“What happened to you being a private eye?”
Jane sighs. “How can I be a private eye? I live in the sticks with four dogs.”
“Well, bring the dogs to London. Sell the money pit. For God’s sake, Jane. It’s not that deep.”
Jane sighs and then emits a strangulated laugh, half filled with unfallen tears. “You think?”
Dexter puts his arms round her and hugs her. “I don’t think,” he breathes into her ear. “I know.”
chapter sixty-seven
The next morning Jane wakes up at six. She drinks the stale water from her bedside table, readjusts her sleep mask, turns on her other side, and tries to get back to sleep, but it doesn’t come. Of course it doesn’t come. Her mind spins with it all, a dark kaleidoscope of worries, secrets, and mysteries, the deep pressure of her promise to Dexter to go to the police today and pass over all she knows. She’s not ready, but she knows she must. And then, below all that, the existential stuff. She thinks of her dogs, curled up right now in her big bed with Shannon. She thinks of all the lives she started but didn’t finish, the endings she ran away from in pursuit of something she can no longer comprehend. She thinks of lost Daisy Black, and lost Claire Connolly, and broken Stuart Tucker. And then, when her head feels so full of everything that she thinks it might explode all over Tony’s expensive pillowcases, she rips off her sleep mask and gets out of bed.
* * *
It’s another gray day in London, which doesn’t help lift her mood. Spots of rain on the windowpanes blur the early morning scenes. She makes herself coffee and two thick slices of toast. As it turns from 6:30 to 6:31, she feels her phone vibrate and picks it up. It’s a text message from a number she doesn’t recognize. She opens it: Jane, it’s Stuart. I’ve spoken to Jessamine. We think it would be really good if you could come and speak to us, before you go to the police. There’s a lot to explain and it will be better face to face. Come whenever you’re ready. I’ll make breakfast.
Jane’s heart races suddenly, quite violently, enough to make her steady herself against the kitchen counter. This is exactly what she wanted. It’s what she’s wanted since the first moment she arrived at Thornwood with Hugo two weeks ago. And now it’s being offered to her and she feels scared. What if it’s a trap? What if Jasper suddenly appears from the wings with his mask and his scarves and his scary greasepainted face? What if she’s drugged and taken to the outhouse and wakes up six hours later with her wrists shackled to the walls?
But no, she thinks. She will tell people where she’s going, including Tobias, and she will tell Stuart that numerous people, including a former Metropolitan Police assistant commissioner know where she is, and then she will surely be safe.
She forms her response to Stuart: I’m on my way. Give me an hour or so. I have told everyone where I’m going, and my stepson is under instruction to call the police if he doesn’t hear from me by 9 a.m. So no monkey business.
She doesn’t give herself time to question her actions too deeply. She necks her coffee, throws away the leftover toast, has a short shower, throws on yesterday’s clothes, and heads through the damp early morning to the tube station.
* * *
Dexter picks up her message half an hour later and replies with a string of shocked-face emojis. He says, Take a fucking knife.
She already has. One of Tony’s super-expensive Japanese chef’s knives is tucked into her shoulder bag, and she has a tiny paring knife inside her sock, just in case she becomes separated from her bag. She feels slightly reassured by her preparations as she exits the tube at Hampstead at 8 a.m., but not entirely. And, for some reason, as she approaches the back end of the Vale of Health and sees the turning to the Blacks’ house ahead of her, the sweep of old fencing, the bulge of the jeep parked on the front drive, she finds herself knocking on the door of the handsome man called Spencer. She wants to see a friendly face, feel a moment of normality, of wholesomeness.
Spencer comes to the door. He looks from her hands up to her face and then registers a look of surprise. “Oh,” he says, “I thought you were from Amazon.”
“Well, no, although I am reasonably tall.”
She sees her stupid joke percolate through him and end in a wry laugh. She likes him for it. “I’m really sorry to disturb you so early. I just wanted to…” She steps from foot to foot, trying to find the words to make this less weird. “The Blacks,” she says, gesturing down the lane. “They’ve invited me for breakfast. And I know it sounds silly, but I feel a bit nervous, and I just wanted to tell someone I was going in there. I realize I’m being a tad dramatic, but I just needed to let someone know.”
He looks at a coat hanging from a hook just to his left. “Do you want me to, er, come in with you?”
“Oh,” says Jane. “No. Gosh. No, not at all. But just… if you’re around today…?”
He nods.
“I’ll come and knock again on my way back? So if I don’t, you’ll know that…”
“They’ve killed you.”
“Well, I mean, yes. I suppose.” She smiles at him, wishing she’d worn her red lipstick and a bit of concealer. “But anyway, I shouldn’t be longer than an hour or two. And I do appreciate it.”