Kirsty gets out of bed, slips into the en suite. Doesn’t turn the light on, as the sound of the extractor fan will wake him further. Sits on the lavatory in the windowless pitch-black and, when the phone starts to vibrate again, answers in a whisper.
Amber’s voice – panicked, whispering too – over the drag of waves on pebbles. She’s on the beach. Must be. ‘You’ve got to help me.’
‘Where are you?’
‘Please. They’re looking for me.’
‘Where are you?’ she repeats. She has some idea that she’ll block her number and call the police, call Stan, call Dave Park, and send them down to collect her.
‘You’ve got to get me out of here.’
‘No!’ The word bursts from her mouth like a bomb. ‘I can’t, Amber. You know I can’t,’ she adds. ‘It’s crazy. A crazy idea.’
‘I’m not – Jesus, you don’t understand. There’s – there’s a mob out there. They broke my windows. They killed my dogs. Jade, they’re going to kill me.’
‘Please,’ says Kirsty, ‘you’re not thinking straight. Tell me where you are and I’ll send someone. I’ll get the police to come and pick you up.’
‘Don’t be stupid,’ says Amber. ‘The police are Whitmouth people too. You tell them, and… You’ve got to get me out of here. I have no one else to ask.’
‘I can’t. You know I can’t. Amber, if I come down there now, if I’m anywhere near you, they-’
‘I’m not fucking asking you to… throw a party, you silly bitch. Just… for Chrissake, you’ve got a car, haven’t you? Just come and get me. Take me somewhere else. It doesn’t matter where. Take me up the motorway to a Travelodge and book a room and leave me. It doesn’t matter. I’ll work out what to do after that. But I have to get away from here. Don’t you understand? The minute it’s daylight, I’m dead.’
‘No,’ says Kirsty. ‘No, I can’t. You know I can’t. Tell me where you are. I’ll send someone.’
She hears a tiny, tinny scream at the other end of the line. Thinks for a moment that it’s already too late, then realises that it’s a sound of frustration. ‘NO!’
‘I’ll do what I can,’ she says, ‘but I can’t do that. I won’t. It’ll all be over for both of us, you know that.’
‘Kirsty,’ says Amber, ‘you can’t leave me here. I’m begging you. You have to help me.’
She struggles to stay firm. I can’t do this. It’s too much. She’s asking too much. They’ll know. They’ll know it was me, and they’ll know who I am. I can’t. It’s not my fault. I wasn’t the one who chose to… it’s not my husband who… ‘No,’ she says. ‘No.’
Silence. Breathing. Three waves roll up the shore, suck away again. ‘You have to,’ Amber says again, and her tone has changed.
Kirsty is enraged. Who is she, this woman, to tell me what to do? She’s not my boss. She’s not my friend. She’s the cause of everything, the reason I’ve had to live a lie my whole life. I owe her nothing. Nothing at all. ‘No,’ she says firmly.
Amber’s voice has gone hard; emotionless. When she speaks again, it’s with cold authority, the authority Kirsty remembers so well from the day they killed Chloe, when she took over and started issuing orders. ‘No, but you do,’ she tells her. ‘Because you’re involved, whether you like it or not.’
The implicit threat makes her angry, defensive. ‘What do you mean by that?’ she snaps.
‘Fuck you, Kirsty Lindsay. If you don’t help me, I’m calling them all. Every single one of them. All of them, do you get it? Every newspaper, every TV station, everybody I can bloody think of. And then it won’t be just me any more. Do you understand? Do you understand what I’m saying? They know who I am already. I have nothing to lose. If you won’t help me, then I swear to God they’re going to know every single thing about who you are too.’
Chapter Forty-one
Martin is woken by the sound of an argument. Forgets, in his discomfort – he’s been sleeping sitting up in the van’s cramped driving seat for hours – where he is for a moment until the sight of the neat suburban road, neat suburban cars parked in neat suburban driveways, restores his sense of place. He raises the peak of his cap and cranes round, to see Kirsty Lindsay standing beside the little Renault, bag over her shoulder and keys in her hand, deep in disagreement with her husband. Gingerly, not wanting to make them aware of his presence, he cracks open the window and listens.
‘I don’t believe this,’ says Jim. He’s not put anything on his feet, and clutches his dressing gown over the boxer shorts he’s worn to sleep in since Soph hit the toddling stage.
She opens the car door, throwing her overnight bag on the back seat. She’s no idea whether she’ll need it, but the habit is so ingrained after years of news-driven changes of plan that she is barely able to go to the supermarket without loading it for luck. ‘I’m sorry,’ she says. ‘I have to.’
‘No you don’t,’ he says. ‘You don’t. They know you’re on holiday. Why did you even answer the phone?’
She takes the lazy option and throws the blame back in his lap. ‘You told me to answer the phone. And anyway, you always answer the phone.’
‘Well, that’s different,’ he begins. ‘My mum-’
He catches the look on her face and stops. In the course of a marriage, you learn that there are subjects it is unwise to broach. Kirsty’s untethered status is one of them. She feels keenly the habit that people from loving backgrounds have of assuming that those from bad ones have no emotional attachment to them. He remembers the ferocity of her reaction the first time he pulled the ‘It’s all right for you’ line, and knows it’s a potential deal breaker. He gulps back the words when he hears her sharp intake of breath.
‘Sorry,’ he says.
‘That’s OK,’ she says eventually. He wonders if she’ll use his carelessness as a weapon. Feels he’ll probably deserve it if she does. ‘I’m sorry that I don’t have a mother of my own to worry about,’ she adds, ‘but funnily enough, I do worry about yours.’
The ball’s back in his court. ‘So much so that you’re bailing on going to see her tomorrow,’ he says. ‘She’s been looking forward to this for ages. You know that.’
‘And I told you. I’ll catch up with you as soon as I can. I’ve just got one job, Jim. I don’t have set hours and holidays and a pension. All I’ve got is my willingness to adapt. It’s really, really tough out there at the moment. People are giving up all over the shop, you know that. We need the money. I can’t turn stuff down.’
Christ, I’m even convincing myself, she thinks. ‘You’ve not got a job in the bag yet,’ she adds sharply, and sees him recoil as though she’s slapped him. God, oh God, she thinks. All that work, all that care I’ve taken not to mention the elephant in the room, not to undermine his confidence, not to make him feel unmanned in unemployment, and I’ve blown it all apart with one simple sentence. It’ll take us months to get over this. Months. And he’ll never know I did it to protect him.
He’s silent for a moment. Then: ‘I can’t do much more of this,’ he says.
Kirsty slams the car door and rounds on him. ‘More of what, Jim? More of what? You don’t seem too upset when people tell you they’ve been reading my stuff in the papers. You don’t mind showing off your insider knowledge at dinner parties, do you?’
A light goes on in a window next door. ‘Shh!’ hisses Jim. ‘Keep your voice down!’
She’s been inflaming the argument as a means of leaving without telling him too much. Persists. Jim can’t bear the neighbours knowing their business. He’d sooner bleed to death in the kitchen than make a spectacle of himself by going outside with a knife in his guts.