‘You,’ Emilia says, in alarm, as it dawns on her. ‘You went to a university in Devon, didn’t you? Just for one term. You never said why you left. You had a breakdown back in school. Oh, my God, it’s you!’ She’d been so blind not to see it before. ‘It was you. It was you Louise wanted to get close to. That was why she targeted me.’
‘What are you talking about?’ But there is an edge to Ottilie’s voice now.
‘You’re Ash.’
59
‘What do you mean?’ says Ottilie. Her expression is in shadow, but Emilia can tell by her body language that she knows exactly what she’s talking about.
‘Did you know Louise back at university? Daisy Louise Greene was her full name.’
Ottilie lets the cat slip from her arms and it scuttles from the room. ‘From the Daisy chapters in your book? It sounds like a love affair. I’ve never had a love affair with a woman.’
‘It could have been one-sided. Louise was bi-sexual. Maybe she had a crush on you, even if you did just see her as a friend.’
Ottilie folds her arms across her flimsy nightgown. ‘I didn’t know Louise, or Daisy, or whatever her name was. I’ve never met her.’
The thing about knowing someone for as long as Emilia has known Ottilie is that she recognizes every little tic, every expression, every body movement. And she knows, without a doubt, that Ottilie is lying.
‘Ottilie, please tell me the truth.’
‘You just don’t want to think your husband is a killer, do you? That’s what all this is about. You’d prefer it was me.’
Emilia takes a step towards Ottilie who is backlit by the hallway light. ‘We have CCTV in the back garden. We have footage of you stealing Elliot’s bike,’ she bluffs. ‘I found the beanie in Elliot’s drawer.’ She leans down and takes it out of the bag at her feet and holds it up in the air. Her head swims when she moves and the headache intensifies. ‘Here. This is the type Louise wears. Were you hoping to set up Louise by making me think it was her who stole the bike? And then what? Your plans changed to setting up Elliot?’ She throws it at Ottilie, who catches it with one hand.
‘I don’t know what you mean. I’ve never seen this before.’ She looks at it in disgust and chucks it onto the armchair nearest to her.
‘I know it was you who stole Elliot’s bike. I recognized you in the footage,’ she lies. She hadn’t. At the time she’d thought it was Louise because of the hat.
Ottilie’s eyes widen. The look on her face tells Emilia everything she wants to know.
‘Oh, Ottilie … why?’
She moves towards Emilia and for the second time in the last few weeks she feels afraid of her friend. They’d cuddled under the duvet together in their dormitory when there had been a storm, consoled each other when they were lonely, laughed so much in class that Ottilie had wet herself. Ottilie had been more than a best friend. She’d been like a sister.
‘Daisy knew too much,’ she mutters. ‘She was a bloody psycho. I’d just gone over there to talk to her. That was all. To tell her I knew it was her behind what was happening to you.’
‘She thought your father had killed her mum?’
Ottilie moves from one bare foot to the other, chewing her lip. Emilia can tell her friend is weighing up exactly how honest to be. ‘Yes. He cheated on my lovely mum with Daisy’s, and when my mum found out it destroyed her and she killed herself.’ Her eyes flash, and Emilia shrinks back from her anger.
‘You never said … You never told me. I mean, I knew she’d killed herself but not why.’
‘I didn’t want to tell anyone. It hurt too much.’ She covers her face. ‘This is all such a mess. Such a fucking mess.’
Emilia is rooted to the spot. She’s torn between comforting her friend and running from the flat to call the police. She steps around Ottilie but her friend is too quick. Her hand shoots out and grabs Emilia. ‘You can’t leave, Mils. You’ll go straight to the police. You’ll put your husband first, like you always do.’ She’s holding the top of Emilia’s arm so tightly it hurts. ‘You’ve always put men first. That vain arsehole Jonas, and now Elliot.’
‘He’s my husband, Ottilie. He’s a good man. You’re the one who’s murdered someone.’
‘Sit down,’ Ottilie says, inclining her head towards the sofa. Emilia does as she’s told, rubbing the top of her arm, grateful that the fabric of her denim jacket took the brunt of her friend’s pincer grasp. Ottilie perches next to her, the light from the lamp casting shadows on her beautiful face. Surely Ottilie wouldn’t hurt her. But she killed Louise. The thought hits her like a punch to the stomach.
‘Why did you do it?’ Emilia asks her softly, her body angled towards her friend. It strikes her as almost funny that, from the outside, they look like they’re just having a cosy chat.
Ottilie places her kimono over her knees calmly. Even in this light Emilia can see her friend’s eyes are red-rimmed. ‘I just wanted to talk to her. That’s all. I’m sorry I took Elliot’s bike. I suppose, at the time, I thought if you saw the bike was missing, you’d think it was Louise because of the beanie. Like I said, I didn’t plan to kill her.’
Emilia stares at her in disbelief. It seems calculated. It’s not as though Ottilie lives down the road. She would have had to travel to her house, probably by Uber, at dead of night, and stolen it, knowing that if she wore dark clothing and a hat she could be mistaken for a man. For her husband, even. But she nods and lets Ottilie speak.
‘She got mad. Started accusing my dad. Said he’d struck again – she really believed he was this praying-mantis murderer. It’s absurd, as if my dad would do something like that. I just wanted her to shut up. I tried to reason with her. You have to believe me, Mils.’ She reaches over and grabs her hand. A tear slides down her unlined cheek. ‘She was obsessed, not in the right frame of mind. She’d orchestrated the whole thing … She knew that as soon as I read your book I’d know it was about me. Even though, for the record, she’d embellished the whole romance side of things. She was only ever a friend to me at uni. And then, at your launch, I thought I saw her outside. She didn’t come into the bookshop because she must have known I’d be there. But I recognized her even though she tried to hide from me. I nearly went outside to speak to her, to say hello, but she was with Kristin. When Kristin came back into the shop I asked her who she’d been with and she said your friend Louise, and I thought I’d been mistaken, but I had to see for myself. So I found out where she lived and followed her. She’s hardly changed. As soon as I saw her I knew. It was Daisy. And everything else slotted into place.’
‘Why not just tell me what was going on when you realized Louise was Daisy?’
‘Because …’ she chews her lip ‘… because I was worried that you’d start to think my dad was the killer too. And I didn’t want you to get involved.’
‘Why did she believe your dad was the killer?’ Emilia asks gently. ‘Because she recognized him when she stayed with you that Christmas?’