“Well, not really for me,” I point out. She splutters out a sound of indignation from her nostrils. She’s raging but a moment’s reflection must reveal that it was never that for me. The opposite. Having two husbands cost me the opportunity to be myself.
“Which one of them were you planning to get old with?” she demands. “Or were you going to hobble on your Zimmer frame backward and forward between the two?”
“I don’t know,” I stammer. “I hadn’t thought that far ahead.”
“You hadn’t thought at all, had you? What about when you were sick? Who looked after you? One of them would, that’s for sure. You were never on your own. You never had to crawl out of bed and drag yourself to the chemist for tissues and paracetamol. They probably think the sniffling, snotty version of you is cute, do they?”
It obviously isn’t the moment to tell her that I haven’t been bedbound ill once in the four years since this started. Mums rarely get the chance to be bedbound, bigamist mums have no chance at all. I had to push on. Instead, I remind her, “When you were ill, I brought you chicken soup. I went to the chemist for you.”
It is true: sometimes Fiona was like my third child. I’d drop everything to help her. As I know she would me. Even now. Wouldn’t she? She is furious with me at present, but I just have to ride out the storm. She’ll forgive me. Of course she will. Why else would she rescue me and bring me here to safety?
“I’m struggling with this, Kylie. Because I don’t know who you are. What you think and feel, what you say, what you do—there’s no consistency about you! And without consistency, you are nothing. You might as well be dead.” I recoil from her. It’s just a phrase, I tell myself. People say it; they don’t mean it. Except in this past week, for me, that seemed a scarily real possibility. I might very well have ended up dead. How can she say that to me now? She glares at me and adds, “You can’t be on two teams. You’ve got to pick a side. Tell me which one of them you loved the most.”
“I don’t know why it matters. It’s not as though I’m going to get to choose between them. One of them abducted me. The other no doubt hates me just as much. I’m not going to be able to save either relationship.”
“Just pick one!” she shouts.
“I took immeasurable risks for Daan. I lost friends for him. That shows I love him.”
“You don’t know what love is.”
“But I do. Twice over. I love them both.”
“That’s not allowed.”
“I know, but who decided it wasn’t?”
She raises her hands and for a moment I think she is going to hit me. Instead she pulls at her own hair. I guess she is trying to make me choose between them as some sort of therapy. Facing up to things. I’m frustrating the hell out of her. We stand on the cliff edge, drenched, incensed, bewildered. I imagine Daan walking away and I feel all the things I am going to miss about him. They hit me like stones. His loud, low, long laugh, his funny stories, his promise of the unexpected, a bright future. Then I think of Mark. His pride in his children, his solid, steady work ethic, his earnest interest in the land, our shared history. My bones snap.
“Mark,” I blurt. “Mark, Oli and Seb outweigh Daan. I guess they always did. I was never able to leave them. I’m glad it was Daan who abducted me. I choose Mark.”
“Right, good, I’m glad we’ve got that cleared up. Finally.” The dark night, the noise from the waves smashing, the wind whipping is disconcerting, overwhelming. Her breathing is as fast and shallow as mine. But something skitters across her face that looks a lot like triumph. We look at each other and it is as though it’s the first time we’ve ever really seen one another—
And I suppose in a way it is.
We see one another for what and who we really are. It’s hard to know who is most disappointed, disgusted. “Do you see what you have done?” she asks. “Because you have tried to run two lives in parallel, you’ve shortened the one you really have. Sort of used them up, you know? You’ve run out of time. Do you see that?”
I feel the force of the shove a nanosecond before I anticipate it or understand it. I don’t know why I’ve been so slow. The wine? Something in the wine? It’s too late now. My knees crumble under me and I am flying. The grassy verge, the edge of the cliff, the black sea below are somersaulting into one. Round and around I spin. It’s a fraction of a second. It’s forever. I am plummeting. I am done.
50
Fiona
Fiona walks quickly back to the house. Her head is whirling. Twisting. She takes deep breaths. This isn’t the moment to lose her cool. She’s been so careful all along. She can’t afford a slipup at this late stage.
She had expected Kylie’s eyes to be wide with horror and anguish, her face to be distorted. She thought there might have been a moment of realization when she would beg to be saved. At least for the boys. But she didn’t do that. She stared, eyes wide open （finally!）， as she understood what she had done and what it meant, which just goes to show how selfish she is. Was. She can use the past tense. Kylie should have wanted to survive at least for the boys.
Bitch.
She looked almost peaceful. That annoys Fiona, that Kylie found peace. That isn’t what she wanted to deliver.
Still, at least now she knows which man Kylie would have wanted to hold on to. Which she ultimately valued the most. It was as Fiona had guessed. There is some satisfaction in getting it right. Knowing Kylie better than she knew herself. Fiona guessed months ago. People are always assuming she knows little about intimacy, because she hasn’t ever married—it’s so insulting, so patronizing—she knows more about any of them than they do about each other.
Fiona carefully but rapidly packs up the house. Removes any evidence that she—let alone Kylie—has been here tonight. Then she drives back to London. She hasn’t had a drop to drink. She was very careful about that. Not that she’d have touched the wine, of course. Not after what she’d put in it to ensure Kylie’s reactions were slowed. The drive should take just less than three hours. She wants to hurry but forces herself to keep below the speed limits for the entire journey; she cannot afford to get flashed by a camera.
By now, DC Clements will have searched Daan’s apartment block. It would be lax of her not to, considering Fiona told her he is unfaithful, an accomplished liar. They will have found the room. Well, Fiona wasn’t able to keep it secret forever. Kylie was getting rebellious. That stunt with the plasterboard, that annoying clanking of her chains. Fiona couldn’t keep drugging her and starving her, one thing or the other, so a move had become necessary. When they dust the room for fingerprints, they will find empty water bottles and protein bar wrappers with Daan’s fingerprints on them. When they search Daan’s apartment they will find the cash receipt she planted, for a chain and zip ties, a plastic bucket purchased ten days ago. Eventually, if they search well enough—and DC Clements will because she strikes Fiona as the thorough type—they will find Leigh’s and Kai’s phones hidden in the back of Daan’s wardrobe.
Fiona stole the protein bars and bottles of water from his kitchen, not on her last visit to his flat but on the one before. This whole escapade had taken quite some planning, quite some organization. Fiona is rather proud of herself, how thorough she has been. How she has thought of everything. Kylie always believed she was the smart one, as she was a management consultant and a bigamist too, but in fact Fiona has outwitted her. Tortoise and Hare.