‘You haven’t known loss. Not a loss that you … you cared about,’ she slurred. ‘You didn’t care about Zoe and you didn’t care about Jodie.’
It would have been much better to stay quiet, but challenging was who she was, what she was made for. Fight. She had nothing to lose now anyway. She couldn’t protect Ahmose, wherever he was. She couldn’t even protect herself – couldn’t run, couldn’t fight or flight. Her brain felt as if it was slopping around untethered inside her skull and she was struggling to focus. It couldn’t be just because of the impact of her head on the banister. But she’d watched Carolynn pour the wine for both of them, wouldn’t have drunk it if she thought there was a chance it was drugged.
Why did she even feel surprised that Carolynn had screwed her? Stupid. So stupid, yet again, so slow. Stuck in the funhouse and still hadn’t learned that every view was a distortion.
‘You drugged me, didn’t you?’ she slurred. ‘In the glass, before?’
Carolynn had been in the house for hours. She’d put the wine in the fridge, could have slipped something into the princess glass before Jessie had even arrived. Happy Birthday, Princess. What a gift. ‘Flun … Flunitrazzzz …’ She paused, sucking in deep breaths, trying to clear her brain, couldn’t get her mouth to form the words. ‘Rohyp … hypnol.’ For anxiety, insomnia – of course – it should have occurred to her that Carolynn would have access to drugs. So easy to buy them off the Internet. ‘Why? We’re … we’re supposed to be fri … frien … friends.’
‘Because you’re a lying bitch.’ Carolynn’s voice had changed, her accent harsh and guttural. ‘Roger called me and told me that he wants a divorce. He said that you’d been to the house. He accused me of killing Zoe and Jodie Trigg. It was you, wasn’t it? You fed him those lies, turned him against me.’
Jessie shook her head. ‘No, not me. I didn’t …’ Didn’t what? Her mind and body were drifting in a small boat in the middle of the ocean, rocking on giant waves, the sky darkening above her.
‘You never believed me, did you? You never believed that I was innocent of Zoe’s murder or Jodie’s. You tracked me down at the beach on Friday, had lunch with me, pretended that you wanted to be friends – just to trap me, accuse me, lock me up.’
Carolynn stood and for a dizzying second Jessie thought that she was going to move away, but then she saw a blur of movement and Carolynn’s foot connected hard with her stomach. She tried to raise her arms, to protect her stomach, the baby, but though her dulled mind willed it, her body wouldn’t respond.
A furious scream, another kick, sickeningly hard, and she vomited on to the carpet, coughed and choked, sucking air and vomit back down her windpipe.
Another kick. ‘You’re all the fucking same.’
Acid daggers as something inside her broke and she felt the gushing wetness of blood between her legs.
‘You’re all the fucking same,’ Carolynn screamed. Screamed and kicked, again and again, screaming as she kicked and kicked.
As Jessie slipped into unconsciousness, the pain of Carolynn’s kicks receded. Her whole body felt as if it was wrapped in cotton wool, wrapped and protected. But some stubborn, resistant nugget in her brain, a minuscule part that was still under her control, refused to let Carolynn win – not like this. With one last gargantuan effort of will, she fumbled her hand into the pocket of her dress, swung her arm and buried the nail scissors deep into Carolynn’s calf.
Her eyes drifted closed and Carolynn’s howls of pain faded. She moved her hand to her stomach where her baby had been – I’m sorry – and sank into the darkness.
92
No, Marilyn wanted to yell. Zoe wasn’t her kid. She was yours. Your daughter.
‘Why Jodie?’ he managed, but even he could hear the thin thread of hysterical exhaustion in his own voice. ‘Why her?’
‘Because I needed that ice-cold bitch to care,’ Ruby spat. ‘I fucking needed her to care, like I cared, to hurt like I hurt every minute of every fucking day since she stole my baby from me and gave her away to be adopted. I thought she’d be destroyed when I killed her daughter, but she wasn’t. It didn’t even seem to scratch that rhino-tough skin of hers.’
‘How did you find Carolynn?’
‘By chance. They were down here on holiday, her and her wet husband and the daughter, and I was out on the beach, looking for treasure.’ She flashed him a bitter smile. ‘And I found it, didn’t I? Found much more than I ever could have imagined.’
‘You recognized her?’
‘Of course I fucking recognized her. I’ve had her image here’ – releasing the doll, she tapped an index finger against her temple – ‘for ten long years. The second I saw her, I knew it was her.’
‘And when she came back here? After the trial?’
‘It’s a bit odd, isn’t it, coming back to where your kid was murdered?’ she said, with a lift of her shoulders. ‘Least, it would have been odd if she’d actually loved that poor little sod. I’d been watching her on the television, before the trial, and when it started I hitch-hiked up to London, spent a few months living in hostels, turning tricks up at King’s Cross to make money so that I could go to the Old Bailey and listen to her shit. I don’t know what I expected to hear, but it was obvious that she didn’t care that her daughter was dead. The only thing she seemed to care about was her own precious reputation, her privileged life caving in around her
