Chapter 42 Kate

42 KATE

NOW

She lets herself into the villa with a sigh, then checks to make sure the door is locked.

What was all that about? she thinks. Darcy’s question at the sandbank—“Which one of you told Jacob about Adrian?” It was an impossible question, like asking How long have you been beating your wife?

When did the three of them stop trusting each other?

When Darcy revealed the real reason for this trip , she thinks. That’s when. Talk about an ulterior motive. She thinks she understands the reasoning behind Darcy’s actions, how she was already raw after the long-drawn-out divorce battle, how she’d acted on impulse when Adrian told her about Rob. Darcy had just decided that this was where they had to go, because Rob was going to be here. But she hadn’t thought beyond that, and now they’re in a dilemma.

Still. It’s all so much to take in. All three of them are emotionally battered.

She feels rattled by the evening, and not just because of what they’re planning to do. They had felt like a team before, or at the very least they’d had a common interest. But something has changed. Darcy and Camilla believe she’s too trusting of Jade. Camilla is determined to make Kate the outlier, and Kate wonders why. They’re very different, that’s for damn sure. Camilla looks down her nose at Kate, thinks she’s weaker because she doesn’t spend every second leading with her authentic core.

Or maybe it has to do with the massacre. Because she survived and Cameron didn’t. Survivor resentment. The psychologist, Dr. Luxton, mentioned it years ago. Kate contacted Dr. Luxton when she first got in touch with Camilla and Darcy. She was the only person alive to know Kate had spoken to them; Kate wanted to know if there was anything she should expect, anything that might arise from their relationship that she ought to prepare for.

“Hopefully enough time and healing has happened to make this a good thing,” Dr. Luxton said. “But you might find that they blame you for their loved ones’ deaths. It’s nothing personal if they do. It’s just survivor resentment. Another facet of grief.”

Ah yes. Grief. The soundtrack of Kate’s life, except the main person she has been grieving is herself.

She can barely remember being Briony. Who was she? She knows that Briony was thriving, steadily climbing her way out of a childhood and adolescence marred by poverty and toxic parenting. Kate’s estranged from both her parents now, has no idea if they’re living or dead. It’s a good thing, though hard to explain to the kinds of folks who post things like “no one will ever love you more than your parents” on social media. Perhaps Kate wouldn’t have been able to cut them off had the massacre not happened. Perhaps she would be living a different life, a lesser life.

But her memories are mostly vapors. The massacre has colonized the past, overshadowing all other events with the garishly Technicolor scenes of that night and the ones thereafter. Bright flashes that come to her with violence, even now.

For years, she thought she had raced out of the guesthouse after discovering the second body. In 2010, she started having flashbacks again. Her GP upped her meds, sent her to a psychotherapist. New memories emerged that contradicted the previous narrative—she had attempted to race out of the guesthouse after discovering the second body, but the door was jammed and she panicked, racing to the back exit, only to mistake the door to a bedroom for the one that led outside. She stumbled over two more bodies. Two of her fellow students, Bao and Chan-Juan, both postgraduates from China who were sharing a twin room.

During the trial, she kept hearing a strange twist on her situation: that she survived . The word confused her. Yes, she hadn’t been murdered—but survived? Was this really what survival felt like? She was barely existing. She spent most of her twenties feeling like she was going out of her mind. But the fact that she had lived seemed to preclude her from an understanding of what it was like to be so traumatized that she hardly knew her own address, could only just function. Bizarre illnesses would visit her with vehemence, then depart, only to make way for a different condition, an alternative affliction. Severe psoriasis for a year, forming red crusts on her elbows and knees, all along her scalp. No family history of psoriasis. Stress, the doctors said.

And now the bloody menopause, creeping up on her, apparently years before it’s meant to. She pours herself a glass of water from the tap and sips it thirstily. No point in feeling sorry for herself.

She did, after all, survive.

LATER THAT EVENING, SHE REALIZES that she hasn’t responded to Jade’s text. She needs to speak to her, follow up with her after the discussion with Darcy and Camilla.

She sends her a message.

“I’VE ONLY GOT A FEW minutes,” Jade says, breathless, ten minutes later. She glances behind her, checking to make sure that the door to Kate’s villa is closed.

“What was the favor?” Kate asks.

Jade looks reluctant to say. “I wanted to see if you might help me get the morning-after pill.”

This wasn’t at all what Kate was expecting. “Oh.”

“It’s not something I’d normally ask for, but I’m worried that if the prescription is in my name, Rob will find out.”

Kate nods, understanding a little better. “I see. Can you get that here?”

“Yes, I’ve checked. Rob would go mad if he found out. He wants a baby so badly.” She grows tearful. “But I can’t. I can’t….”

Kate nods again, seeing Jade’s face turn ashen. “We can put it in my name. Just tell me what I need to do.”

Jade recovers and offers a smile. “Thank you.”

“My offer still stands,” Kate says. “I have two thousand pounds sitting in an account that you can take right now and go into hiding. I can ask my butler to arrange a seaplane. The girls and I will cover for you, send Rob on a wild-goose chase in the wrong direction. Buy you time.”

Jade considers briefly, then shakes her head. “I can help you get what you need. I want to. Thank you, though.”

She smiles, and Kate feels disappointed. It would be safer for Jade on all counts if she just got the hell away from here.

“We’re thinking of confronting him tomorrow night,” she says, still uneasy at the thought of it. “Darcy says the gym is the best place. No one uses it other than Rob, and no one can see in. And there’s a disco on tomorrow night at the bar, so we figure most of the guests will be there.”

She watches fear pulse behind Jade’s eyes. “Tomorrow?”

“Yes. Is that all right?”

Jade bites her lip. “We’re going on a scuba trip tomorrow morning. But we’ll be back by then, I’m sure.”

Kate takes a breath, scarcely believing what she has agreed to. “Camilla wants you to bring Rob there. Maybe you can… get him into a compromising position.”

Jade’s face drops. “Right.”

“We’ll make it look like you have nothing to do with it, OK?” Kate says. “We’ll come in and take it from there.”

“What if he suspects me?” Jade says, more to herself than to Kate.

“He won’t,” Kate says. “We’ll make sure of it. With all three of us cornering him, he might just… slip up, reveal something that the police can follow up on. Camilla wants to record the meeting, just in case.” She waits for Jade to object to it, to tell her how mad she sounds. But she doesn’t. “I know it sounds desperate, but we won’t get another chance like this.”

“Fuck, this is all so dangerous,” Jade says.

Kate nods. What is she doing? What is she actually doing, going along with this?

“What happens afterward?” Jade asks.

“We lock him inside.”

Jade’s eyes widen, and Kate waits for her to balk at the whole thing. But she doesn’t, and so she continues.

“He won’t be found until morning, when the gym opens. Darcy has arranged a seaplane to fly us all off the island straight after. You’ll come too, back to the UK. You’ll be safe.”

She sees Jade take a deep breath and remembers how terrifying this must be for her.

“I give you my word,” she tells the younger woman, squeezing her hand. “I won’t let anything happen to you.”

“All my stuff is at our house,” Jade says, that deer-in-headlights look returning. “I’ll have nothing, nowhere to live.”

“You can stay with me, if you like,” Kate says. “I’m in Carmarthenshire.”

Jade smiles weakly, but when she lifts a hand to brush hair out of her face Kate notices that she’s trembling.

“Are you all right?” she asks. “Please don’t feel you have to do this. You can back out….”

Jade shakes her head, determined. “No. You’re right to speak to him here, in the Maldives. Back home you could lose him more easily, or you might not get away. And anyway, he has a ton of friends—pretty dodgy, some of them. They frighten me.”

“Jesus,” Kate says, imagining how connected Rob must be. She imagines he has networks in the underworld, long tentacles spread into dark places.

“Tomorrow night,” she continues. “Eight o’clock. Bring him to the gym. You’ll have ten minutes to get him… comfortable. At least make sure it’s only the two of you in there. Then we’ll come inside and take it from there.”

Jade nods and turns for the door. “Thanks for trusting me,” she says, and vanishes into the night.