"So was he paying you?" I said. "Did he promise you a cut of the proceeds? Did he say he'd take care of you?"
Her eyes wavered and fell. I saw her fingers close in on one another.
"He told you that," I said. "I wonder what else he told you about me? Do you think he was going to let you just walk away with your money? When you're the only person who knows what he did?"
She looked up again at that and her eyes met mine, wide and horrified.
“Maudie, stop it,” said Matt. “Stop pretending. It’s embarrassing.”
I ignored him. "No one knows you exist, Jessica, do they? Who is going to miss you, if you disappear? Don't you think he knew that? He knows you're - you're totally dispensable. How long do you think you’d last, once he got what he wanted?"
I stopped speaking and for a moment the room was silent, save for the sound of our lungs labouring for air. Slowly, Jessica turned to Matt. He wasn’t looking at her; he hadn’t taken his eyes off me. Then, very slowly, she pivoted. She turned back and I saw her mouth something, I heard her whisper something. I think it was 'go'.
I didn't stop to think. My foot went up and out, connecting with the brandy glass in Matt’s hand. It went flying, a golden sheet of liquid, spread for a second in the air like a shimmering silk scarf. Then the glass hit the floor and shattered. In the same moment, I propelled myself forward, aiming myself between the two of them. My shoulder hit Matt’s arm and flung him backwards. I was at the hallway door. I was running down the corridor to the front door. I was free.
I was at the front door, scrabbling at the lock, when he grabbed me around the neck. I shrieked.
“Shut up,” he hissed. “Shut the fuck up, or I’ll kill you right now, right here.”
His arm was pressing on my windpipe. I clawed at his sleeve, gasping. He began dragging me backwards. I could hear my heels thumping and clacking uselessly on the wooden floor as I was pulled remorselessly back into the living room.
He stopped for a moment, panting. His hold around my neck had loosened and I dragged some air into my burning lungs. I was almost too frightened to think, certainly to speak, until I saw Jessica’s face. I couldn’t stop thinking of her as Jessica. She was biting her lip, looking at Matt and me. Her hand was at her throat again, holding onto the necklace that I’d bought her.
I managed to get enough air in to speak. “Jess – you - please help me. Please–”
Matt pulled me away. He started dragging me towards the doors of the roof terrace. I started to struggle even harder. I stopped clawing at his arm that lay like a bar of iron across my neck, the muscles tense as stone, and started flailing at anything I could, grabbing for a grip on something anywhere, on anything.
“Don’t fucking struggle,” said Matt, through gritted teeth. He sounded as if he were crying. “If you do, I’m just going to knock you out. Stop struggling –“
I barely heard him. I had my eyes fixed on her, on the fake Jessica. I tried to pour all my terror, all my despair into my eyes, every single bit of concentrated emotion into my gaze; as she’d once done for me, staring up at me from the street outside.
“Jessica,” I croaked. “Don’t let him do this-” She said nothing but her eyes were on mine. I couldn’t read her expression. My vision was beginning to fog.
My last sentence was cut off with a gasp as I was pulled through the open doorway to the roof terrace. A gust of cold wind blasted against my cheek.
“Straight over,” said Matt in a high, strange voice. He sounded hysterical; he was half-laughing, half-sobbing. “It won’t hurt, Maudie. It’ll be quick.”
The next moment, the rough concrete of the boundary wall was up against my chest and my head was being forced over the top of the wall. I heard the tinkle of glass as my knee hit the mirror that stood against the wall. I could see the street far below. It was going to happen, then. I was going to die.
“I’m sorry,” said Matt, crying. “It’s for the best. I’m sorry-”
I could feel him dip behind me and grasp me around the waist and I felt myself begin to rise. I couldn’t scream. My whole being was concentrated on trying to grip the wall, trying to stay alive for one second longer. The far-off road swung dizzily in my tear-filled vision. God help me.
The pressure around my waist suddenly slackened. At the same time, I heard Matt roar out. I was released; the swinging road vanished as I fell backwards away from the wall. My feet hit the floor and my knees buckled, but, oh God, I hadn’t gone over, I hadn’t fallen... I gulped in cold night air. My face was burning where the concrete had scraped it and I’d cut my knee on a shard of mirror glass. I turned round.
Jessica had dug her fingers into Matt’s eyes. She had her arms around his neck and was forcing his head back. Her teeth were bared in a desperate grimace; she looked as though she was laughing. As I watched, Matt’s fist caught her full in the face and he flailed backwards – I watched her nose spout blood and gasped involuntarily. She loosed her hold and dropped to the floor. Matt turned, snarling, his eyes streaming. I saw his fist come up and back as my own hand closed upon a long shard of glass. As his fist came down towards Jessica’s face, I drove the glass into the side of his neck.
Blood flew out in a parabola of red. It spattered across Jessica’s face as she lay gasping on the decking. Matt staggered and dropped to his knees. He put a hand up to the shining splinter protruding from his neck. His fingers pulled at it and more blood fell, this time in droplets, thickly over his shoulder and onto the terrace.
I realised I had my hands clamped over my mouth. I could feel my eyes bulging.
Matt groaned. A fine spray of blood feathered through the air. His bleeding hand fell away from the mirror shard buried in his neck. He took one shuffling knee-walk step and fell, his face dropping onto Jessica’s leg. She cried out and rolled away and he fell onto the floor, face down. The piece of mirror shattered, half of it falling beneath his body, half of it remaining in his neck. It jerked with each bump of his pulse and, as I watched, the jerks grew fainter and fainter until at last the piece of glass grew still. Behind the blood dappling the surface, I could see the night sky reflected; a little sliver of darkness buried in the pale flesh of my husband’s neck.
My eyes met Jessica's. Beyond the awful bubble of silence that surrounded us, I could dimly hear the sounds of the city flowing on without us: car horns, a siren, a shout from the street below.
Jessica pulled herself into a sitting position and hung her head forward. She was breathing heavily, blood dripping from her broken nose. She put a hand up to her mouth.
"Shit," she said thickly and as her hand came away I saw a nugget of enamel in her bloodied palm, half a tooth that Matt's fist had knocked from her jaw. It dropped from her fingers and was swallowed up in the lake of blood that lay by Matt's downturned face.
I managed to take my hands from my face; my whole body felt stiff, as if I'd been welded to the spot and hadn't moved for hours. Slowly, I held out a hand to Jessica and helped her to her feet. We stood swaying, holding one another up.
"Are you alright?" I asked.
"Not really." She looked at me, tears welling up. "Oh shit, Maudie. You killed him."
We both looked down at Matt's body, the blood surrounding him, the mirror shard winking grotesquely from his neck. I dropped Jessica's hand and stepped back.
"Oh my God, you killed him. What are we going to do?"
"Just wait-"
"Maudie, we're fucked. What are we going to do?"
I lifted a clenched fist and rested it against my chest, between my breasts. I could hear the study thump of my heartbeat beneath my breastbone, slowing gradually as my breathing grew deeper. The strangest thing was happening. Inside, I felt a core of something hard, and metallic, something steely, unfolding like a metal flower. Filaments were beginning to spread through me, molten iron sending out a root system of strength that straightened my back and lifted my head. For the first time in my life, I had no one to turn to, no one to take care of things for me. I had no one. And yet, for the first time in my life, I knew it didn’t matter. I can do this, I thought, I can cope. Yes, said a little voice inside my head, a sane voice, a voice of reason. You can.