‘There, you’ve got your colour back. I told you a nap would do you good. Now, are you going to tell me what’s going on?’
I couldn’t bear to tell her that Mike was having financial difficulties, or that Amy had been having an affair, so I just told her what I’d learned from Jake: that Amy was under the influence of some strong medication and there’d been some damage to the car before the crash.
‘But it was an accident, wasn’t it?’ Her face was pale.
‘It’s suspicious. But the police look for motive first and foremost. That’s what I’m trying to work out. Who, if anyone, would want to hurt her?’
Mike called in to collect Betsy on his way home. Did he look like a man who’d murdered his wife after finding out she was cheating on him? I wanted to push the thought away, but I couldn’t unthink it. I tried to read him, but he just looked so weary. This whole situation with Betsy was spectacularly bad timing.
I wasn’t going to give away what I knew. I’d been too quick to reveal that I’d found out about his financial troubles. If he knew Amy had been cheating on him, he didn’t need to know that I’d found out. One way or the other, things would become clear sooner or later.
Was Mike capable of killing Amy? If he had known that his wife was having an affair with his friend, that was certainly a motive to hurt her. But why go after Amy and not Phil? Yes, there was the money to factor in, but setting up a car crash and making it look like a horrible accident seemed quite complicated for a crime of passion.
I logged on to Amy’s Facebook from my phone and read the messages from Phil again. Had he wanted to hurt Amy, after she broke things off with him? I’d only met Phil a couple of times and he hadn’t made any real impression on me. He was quite good-looking, in a rough-around-the-edges sort of way, and it was hard to say if he had a winning personality – whenever I’d seen him he had been on the verge of tears.
Come to think of it, he had been particularly upset by Amy’s accident. I could picture him now, standing with us at the grave. He had been as upset as the rest of us. Was that because she was his wife’s best friend and a mother of three whose death was an absolute tragedy, or because he’d had a hand in it?
I couldn’t imagine Amy with him. But then again, how well had I really known my sister lately? If I’d learned anything in these past few weeks, it was that Amy and I had become complete strangers to each other.
Tormented, I knew that only a glass of wine would help. And mid-way through my second glass, I had a moment of clarity; I needed help to process this information, and there was only one person I could talk to.
Jake answered on the third ring and agreed to come over when I told him I’d stumbled onto valuable new evidence. He still hadn’t arrived by the time I poured my third glass so I opened a second bottle.
It was raining when I opened the door. Jake’s glasses misted up, and when he took them off I saw that he had droplets of water in his eyelashes. Up close, I could see a smattering of very light freckles on his nose that I hadn’t noticed before. His hair was slick and black, wet from the rain. I vaguely thought of the roses I’d received with an anonymous note, and wondered again if he’d sent them.
The wine had left me way buzzier than I thought, and it wasn’t until I started to speak that I realised I was more than just a little tipsy.
Jake clocked the open bottle and the glass I’d poured myself. ‘Are you feeling OK?’ He asked.
‘Long day. Make that a long week – or month.’
I poured him a glass and led him through to the living room. We sat at either end of the sofa, an awkward gap between us. I tried to find the words to start explaining what I’d discovered. When I’d invited Jake over it had felt quite urgent, but here I was losing focus again. And his eyes - at first, I’d thought they were brown but now they looked green. Or was it the firelight?
‘You wanted to tell me something?’
‘Erm, yes, right. Sorry, I’m just… it’s a little hard for me to focus these days.’
Nice one, Izzy – use your sister’s death as an excuse for your propensity for binge drinking. I cleared my throat and concentrated really hard on not sounding too pissed.
‘I think Amy was having an affair,’ I said, fixing my eyes on the carpet. ‘I got into her messages, and there were several from a man that she seems to have recently broken up with. A man who just happens to be her best friend’s husband.’ I choked on the last few words.
‘Are you sure?’ Jake’s eyes grew wide.
‘Yes,’ I said, feeling the tears start. ‘She was cheating on Mike because she wasn’t happy, because she wanted more from life. And I didn’t know about it, and I wasn’t there for her when she needed me…’
The grief hit me again: a surging swell of sorrow for having lost my sister – first to time and distance, and then to eternity. It swept over my head like a tidal wave, a tsunami I hadn’t seen coming, and I was drowning before I realised what was going on.
‘There, there,’ Jake shuffled along the sofa and gently put one arm around my shoulder.
I flopped my head against his chest. The warmth of him was real and solid and comforting. He smelled like juniper and leather and rain.
‘It’s OK,’ he said. His voice was
