Chapter 24

24

Him and her.

In the end, it made all the sense in the world that Tony was Patient X. Naively I had told him about my interview with Eva, and her offer of a free therapy session. But I never told him I had agreed to it, even though our chat barely constituted a session, at least not one she'd bother writing up. I was too reserved to tell her anything of interest and after forty minutes, I thanked her and left. That was the last time we ever spoke. The mystery is how he knew where I'd been that day—what led my brother to Eva?

I had examined those pages so carefully when I found her journal, the sacred line between patient and therapist disintegrating. It was all there, simmering in the spaces between the words, boundaries yielding, the potent sense that it was only a matter of time before their relationship would break out of the consulting room and into real life. And my secrets too revealed along with it.

I wake to daylight seeping through my eyelids. Replay, recalibrate, rewind. Cushions are scattered on the floor, his clothes and mine in a twisted trail, forming strange shapes in the morning light. I can still feel him, on top of me, inside me, the scent of us heavy in the room.

Up it floats, the hazy chronology of last night, the bathroom and, at some point, one of us had signaled a move elsewhere. How willingly I had followed him up here, walking ahead of him into his room. Lying on his bed, I remember how I had turned my head toward the soft beam of light from the bathroom, saw a glimpse of an open door that led to Eva's bedroom. Somehow it unnerved me, and I got up from his bed to close it.

"I feel as if I'm being watched," I had said and he'd laughed at the melodrama of it.

"It's a little late for worrying about that," he had quipped, lightly kissing my stomach, lowering me back down onto the bed.

Now I watch him ocean deep in sleep, his arms curled around a pillow. Sleep suits him, I decide, melting away the frown lines and the creases around his eyes, a smile teasing at the edge of his lips. Part of me knows I should get up and leave, creep away before it's sabotaged. But I can't bear to quite yet and I shift positions instead, feel his arm move across me, the exhale of his breath on the nape of my neck. I drift off.

When I wake again, the bed is empty. I hear him moving around in the bathroom, the thrum of the shower, the whirr of a shaver. I luxuriate in these sounds, the clicks and creaks of the heating coming on, a cleaner tidying up somewhere downstairs.

He walks back in, gets dressed. "I'll be back in two hours, we'll do something," he says. "You always make a habit of running away, don't do that again."

"Sounds good," I say, sleepily. I smile up at him and then he is gone.

The cushioned silence of the room presses in. I get up, nose around the bathroom, stare at my reflection. My body feels tender, aching. My hair is a mess, frizzy from the downpour last night, traces of last night's makeup smeared beneath my eyes, my lips stained red. I am undone, but something radiates through me, a rawness, a hunger of a different kind.

I study myself for a moment. I seem as opaque to myself as I am to him. I turn to the bathroom door—her connecting door. Once again, I'm driven by the siren call of what lies behind.

My feet lead me through before my mind can object, drawn inexorably by her life and how it is melting into mine. I step into the walk-in closet; the mad extravagance of it, a glittering dressing-up box for grown-ups, for women who surely can't exist beyond films or fantasy. Each section is meticulously arranged by color, print, dress type, even hem length. There is night and day wear; Grecian metallic dresses; velvet jackets, satin jumpsuits, sections for denim, sections for leopard print. There's a lingerie drawer too, which I begin to slide open but something stops me and instead I pick up a black scarf with golden embroidered stars. Running the velvet fabric across the back of my neck, I inhale the scent of it, vanilla and old cigarettes still cling to its fibers.

My eye is caught by one of the silk slip dresses in eau de Nil and I pull it from its hanger, a slash of black lace at its edges. I feel giddy with the illicit thrill of it, caught between desire and fear he may return. I unwrap my towel and shimmy the dress over my head. Stepping into a pair of patent nude shoes with their trademark flash of scarlet sole, I sway down the short aisle between the rails.

The dress clings to my body, brushes my legs. I twirl and sashay, seduced by the film playing in my head. Except when I check myself out in the mirror, it's not like that at all. The delicate silk that should fall into loose Grecian folds stretches cheaply across my breasts, its seams gape at my hips. I notice my pale skin pressing through the stitching and a wave of revulsion sweeps over me. Her superiority on so many levels, losing at a game I realize now I've been playing all along.

I slip the dress off awkwardly, my elbow knocks a row of handbags on the shelf above me. One of them falls to the floor and, as I stretch up to replace it, I see a bulky plastic Superdrug bag that looks out of place, take it out and look inside. There are Duracell batteries, Nurofen, emery boards and an almost-full bottle of sparkling water that long ago lost its fizz. Like a small time capsule. I wonder how long they've been lying here.

I'm about to replace them when I spot something else, a slim blue-and-white cardboard packet ripped open in a crevice of the bag that I missed, and behind it a receipt. I take them both out, turn it over in my hands.

Ninety-nine percent accurate, it says along the top in yellow. I glance at the itemized list and there it is right at the top:

Clear Blue Early detection test—￡21.99.

Superdrug King Street. 24 June 2019

The date jumps out at me and I freeze.

The day Eva died. Nausea seeps through me like a poison, black dots prickle the edges of my vision. Eva would have taken this test two years ago. She would have felt sick too perhaps, her hand shaking as she crouched over the toilet, peeing on the stick, willing that second blue line not to come into being.

An icy certainty sweeps up my spine. The stark reality of that date hits me. He told me he had discovered the pregnancy test many months before Eva died.

Three months. You're sure about that?

Yes, completely sure.

I check again, the numbers blur before my eyes. I struggle to think of a reasonable explanation.

Fuck, Nate. You lied.

I cry out loud, on my knees now, in Eva's wardrobe, the smell of her clothes, the satin slip dress like a discarded second skin beside me. The receipt is crystal clear. I scan it once more, nausea rising all over again. Then I catch the payment details below it.

MASTERCARD **** **** **** 4617

The last four digits of a credit card, one that's all too familiar to me. These are the numbers I have tapped into my online banking app countless times to transfer rental income or the odd sum to cover a flight.

Tony's card. He paid for Eva's pregnancy test.

Did this mean that Tony was the father? Did Nate know?

Worse, had he really found out about Eva's affair right before her death?

You lied. You're a seasoned professional after all, poisoned by more secrets than I am.

These omissions flay me. He had known this whole time, that his wife's lover was my brother, that's why he questioned me about Tony's surname back in Dungeness. He was piecing it together right then, in that moment. He lied about Priya to distract me from the real affair. I knew it didn't add up and that's why.

He told the inquest that he left early in the morning for his university conference, that he was away for the whole of that day, returning the next morning to find her body. This test could be different to the one he found, but that seems highly unlikely.

What was he so desperate to conceal? Kath's theory about the fentanyl flashes in my mind. So does the image of her sculptures, the female statues scored through over and over. Right across their bellies. Who would have done that and why? Eva, in an act of defiance, a final work of art: expressing her fury at the way men chose to control her body, her condition.

I wrap the towel tight around myself, replace everything except the receipt. I grip it in my palm, close Eva's door and I'm back in Nate's room. Swiftly I get dressed, turn my back to the bed, the coil of sheets where we lay last night. Another country now.

Anger burns in my throat, spiking my veins. I'm struck for a moment by how novel it is to feel self-righteous. My secrets amount to nothing compared to his. His fake compassion, the interest in my past. Our future that he dangled before me. The possibility of a new start in New York. A brilliant strategy to divert me from the real story, the one he was never going to tell me with a second inquest looming.

And what's more: if he did find the pregnancy test on the day she died, it means he still had the chance—and the drugs—to react accordingly. When I get home, I lie on my bed, try to cry but I am beyond tears. Carefully, I unfold the receipt, look at it again until the numbers and letters blur. Outside there is the steady metronomic thud of a child kicking a ball against the garden fence. Over and over, two questions circle and land.

Who was Eva most undone by? Who did she fear more—Tony or Nate?