It Could Have Been Her(92)
Why? Jane wonders. Why did Jessamine react that way?
And it is a terrible thing to think, she ponders, of a woman who has been through the most unthinkable and dreadful trauma for virtually her entire adult life. But for some reason Jane does not trust Jessamine.
She does not trust her in the least.
chapter seventy-five
STUART, NOW
I move around the rooms of Thornwood in a state of numb horror, this house where I have lived now for nearly ten years, this house that has trapped me, suffocated me, hurt me, and now, I know, deceived me. I am collecting my possessions, folding them neatly into rucksacks and canvas shoppers. My brother and his family await me in their solid proper house in a safe suburban backwater.
The police have finished questioning me for now, while Jessamine and Daisy are still at the station. A police officer follows behind me as I gather my things; his name is Asif and I can tell he thinks I’m dodgy, thinks, somehow, that this is my doing, and I cannot blame him, because I have lived here with this horror beneath my feet, I have brought Annie her tea and her coffee and her biscuit just so on the saucer four times a day every day into the room beneath which those girls lay in their terrible contortions. I have shared a bed with a woman at night whose entire being is formed of the trauma and agony of that to which she bore witness, and every day I allowed her to sink further into addiction and hopelessness. I let her daughter, a child I claim to love as if she were my own, run away and into the path of a demented man who tried to kill her, and I did not report her disappearance to the police. I found a photograph of a young woman wearing shackles around her legs and I did not say anything.
I would not trust me either.
I can hear the equipment down below, the haunting sound of jackhammers and drills, men calling to each other, as I tuck five pairs of socks into my bag. I call for Hugo, and when the dog and I leave a few minutes later, followed by Asif out onto the Vale, as I thread my way through the vans and cars and clusters of onlookers, I swallow back some tears.
I know that I am never coming back to this dark, dark house.
chapter seventy-six
Dexter braves the wilds of Little Belmont to see Jane a few days later. The late May weather has turned clement again and they are able to sit outside in the kitchen garden, accompanied by a lone bumblebee floating purposefully around the lavender, and the four dogs in various states of repose.
“They’re still looking for Jasper,” Dexter says.
“Yes,” Jane replies, a note of uncertainty in her own voice. “I feel very strongly they won’t find him.”
“What makes you say that?”
Jane sighs. “I think it will have been too much for him. I think he will have, as you young people say, un-alived himself.”
Dexter winces. “You reckon?”
“I do. And actually, if he didn’t do it directly after he tried to kill Daisy in the woods that day, he’d have done it when all the secrets came out.”
“And maybe he’ll never be found?”
“Indeed. Maybe not.”
She sighs again, racked with a deep sense of dissatisfaction. Something is not right. Something is missing. But that, she thinks to herself, is for the police to ascertain now. Her role here is done; it’s over. It’s time for her to step away and focus on her own existence and so she turns to her stepson and says, “I’m selling it.”
“Selling what?”
“This.” She gestures at the rambling mass behind and in front of her. “The whole thing. I spoke to Sturrets in the village this morning. Chloe said it could go for two mill, if I’m prepared to wait for a wealthy buyer who’s not looking for a bargain, one point five if I just want rid of it.”
“God, is that all?”
“What? Oh my goodness, you spoiled little goose!”
“Well, it’s not that much, is it? Not for all this? My apartment’s not worth much less than that.”
“Yes, and that’s because you live in one of the nicest streets in London. But this house… its value is arbitrary really. It’s worth what someone thinks they can make out of it because nobody will want it like this. They will want it fixed and changed and added to and that will cost so much money and take so much time, and you can’t expect a buyer to be both brave and stupid. So I’ll take what someone is prepared to give me, and then I can… Jesus…” She exhales on the second syllable. “… escape.”
“Escape?”
“Yes. That woman. Jessamine. She stayed. And why did she stay? Why didn’t she escape the first chance she got? I know that’s what most people would think—but I get it, I really do get it. Trauma can tie you down, hold you in one position. You think you’ve moved, you think you’re somewhere else, but you’re not; you’re still there, pinned down in every single moment of it, and it’s easier, somehow, to stay close to the scenes of those moments, not to tug too hard at the pins, to surrender, not struggle—and I can’t explain it any better than that. Jasper took the opposite approach—he pulled all of those pins out and dealt with the searing pain and then stumbled out into the world bleeding and in agony and… urgh.” She lets her head drop. “But there is a middle ground. Leaving slowly. And really, I’ve been leaving slowly for the last thirty-five years. Taking the pins out, one by one. And now I’m ready. It feels right.”