Believing the Lie - Elizabeth George [255]
“And this is supposed to reassure me?” Alatea demanded. “What does a story in The Source have to do with anything? What does it have to do with what he’s asking of you? You’ve photographed me, haven’t you? You’ve followed me and you’ve photographed me and that’s the proof he wants.”
“You don’t understand,” the other woman said. “He doesn’t need proof. These types never do. Proof is nothing to them. They start their business just this side of the law and if they slip over onto the other side, they have a score of solicitors to take care of the problem.”
“Then let me buy your photos,” Alatea said. “If he sees them, if he sees me in them…” She took off her wedding rings, the diamond and the band. She took off a large emerald that Valerie Fairclough had given her as a wedding gift. She said, “Here. Please. Take these as well. In exchange for your photos.”
“But photos are nothing. They’re meaningless without words. It’s the words that count. It’s what’s written that counts. And anyway, I don’t want your money and I don’t want your jewellery. I just want to apologise for… well, for everything but especially for how I might have ruined things for you. We’re much the same, you and I. With different cause, I daresay, but otherwise the same.”
Alatea clung to what an apology from this woman might mean. She said, “So you won’t tell him?”
The woman looked regretful. “I’m afraid he knows. That’s the point. That’s why I’ve come. I want you to be ready for what might come next and to know it’s my fault and to know how terribly sorry I am. I tried to keep things from him, but these people have ways of finding things out and once he came to Cumbria… I’m so sorry, Mrs. Fairclough.”
Alatea took this in fully and realised what it meant, not only to her but to Nicky and to their life together. She said, “He’s here, in Cumbria?”
“He’s been here for days. I thought you would have known. Didn’t he— ”
“Where is he now? Tell me.”
“Windermere, I think. Other than that, I don’t know.”
Nothing else remained to be said, but many things remained to be done. Alatea said good-bye to the woman and like someone in a dream, she gathered everything she’d brought down from the bedroom in the hope of bribing her. It was just as well, she thought, that the woman had refused her offerings. She would need them now herself in the coming days, for she’d run out of options.
She went back up the stairs to the bedroom and threw the jewellery and money onto the bed. From the box room at the end of the corridor, she brought out a small valise. There was little enough time to gather the things she would need.
Back in the bedroom, she went to the chest of drawers. It stood between two windows and the sound of a car door slamming outside drew her attention to the front of the house again. She saw that, on the worst possible day, Nicky had come home from the pele project early. He was now in conversation with the red-haired woman. He was violent faced. His voice grew loud although through the glass of the window, Alatea could not understand his words.
But understanding the words didn’t matter. Only the fact that they were speaking to each other mattered. That in conjunction with Nicky’s expression gave testimony to the topic between them. Seeing this, Alatea saw also that even when it came to escape, she was out of options. She could not leave in her car, for Nicky and the woman stood on the fan of gravel across which she would need to drive. She could not go by foot to the railway station at the far end of Arnside village, for the only route there went directly between her husband and the woman where they stood talking. So she prayed for some kind of answer to come to her and she paced the room until she saw it. It was through the window, just as the vision of Nicky and the red-haired woman had been. But it was the window on a wall perpendicular to that which overlooked the driveway. This window offered a view of the lawn and beyond it the seawall sketched a stony line of demarcation between the